Featuring Jeffrey Freedner

Painterdog responded to my last post with a comment warning artists to rethink their positions, if they find themselves approaching 40 and still aren't making any money with their art. Being, of course, a self-absorbed artist who takes a heightened interest in people who take an interest in me :-), I checked out his website. And now I am dedicating this post to explaining why I think his art is pretty great.

"Rembrandt's Carcass," oil on canvas, 18"x 24"

As you can see, this guy has done his classical-tradition homework. This is often looked down upon, or completely dismissed, in today's 'hip' art scene; I think the assumption is that it is not an innovative response to the modern world, but rather a reiteration of anachronistic forms to generate a recognizable 'art product' that may look good on a suburban wall, but doesn't make a statement beyond that.

And indeed, artists who do this often make a better living than those who don't, and aren't represented by a Chelsea gallery; retro art is much easier to sell to the masses. Witness the number of tourists in Soho who gobble up pseudo-Picasso prints as fast as they buy photographs of the Statue of Liberty.

"Distant City," oil on board, 16"x 10"

Jeffrey, however, is not one of those artists. First of all, anachronistic copy-artists often ape a technique, rather than mastering it; they churn out stuff that sort of looks classical, but lacks the bang-on drawing, rich luminosity, or sophisticated, complex color composition of, say, a genuine Rembrandt or Bosch, which are two of the artists that Jeffrey's work brings to mind at first viewing.

But from what I can see of these paintings, it looks to me like Jeffrey has not only mastered drawing, luminosity, color composition and texture, he is using them to express a seamless, modern vision of his own. His figures may seem Bosch-esque, but they're neither literally depicted nor ripped-off from another artist. They feel directly observed, filtered through the lense of strong emotion and masterful technique, and conspire to create both a powerful visual image and a cohesive emotional affect.

And Jeffrey is doing this at a level of complexity that few painters can pull off. Look at "Rembrandt's Carcass." He has included at least eight different qualities of luminosity within the same painting, without making it feel completely chaotic; there is reflected incandescent light on the tile in the lower left, bright fluorescent searchlight in the center, sunset on the horizon, fire in the background, blue smoke picking up the searchlight, different qualities of interior light in the windows, and areas where all of these lights reflect in different ways off the figures and objects.

Folks, that is nothing to be sneezed at. I know at least one Chelsea painter who claims to 'do light well,' whose paintings sell in the five-digit range, who is incapable of this.

"Victim 2", oil on wood, 18"x 12"

Moreover, Jeffrey is using his technique to evoke emotions which may be timeless, but certainly aren't irrelevant to modern society. They're not just mindless, flat depictions of angst, either. In this painting, 'Victim 2,' the intense blue background provides a sense of simultaneous institutional displacement and a possible hope for transcendence; used to highlight an image of anonymous brutality, it is nevertheless purely beautiful in its essence.

My only complaint, in fact, is that the images on Jeffrey's website are only dated through 2002. Have you stopped painting, Jeffrey, or have you simply not updated your site?

I admit that many of these paintings would be difficult to live with, given the dark emotions which they express and the power with which they express it. It seems to require the power-politicking of a Chelsea dealer to convince collectors to purchase paintings like this, but it can certainly be done. I have visited the inside of one Park Avenue collector's house, which was full from basement to attic with angst-ridden, aggressive work by young artists that to me, would be much more difficult to look at every day than one of Jeffrey's paintings.

So anyway, Jeffrey, I don't know what to do about the fact that you seem to be producing gorgeous work that's having trouble finding its market. I can only say that it seems to me that you haven't been wasting your time.