The new gondola in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Wild Blue!
Wild Blue
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Tag Archives: Jeff Klisares
Yampa Sleeping Giant
While still a work-in-progress, this strange painting has got me dreaming of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The mountain “Sleeping Giant” looms in the distance as the horses frolic in the snow covered hills.
Yampa Recess
I remain hopeful that I have a major announcement in the days to come!
Lotus Series #07
This is likely my last painting of 2022. Gearing up for a year of total abstraction on large supports.
Happy New Year!
Lotus of Dreamy Forgetfulness #04
Critical ignorance has become a virtue that few share in this climate of information overload that burns up our wakeful time. These images are an ode to inner peace and quiet.
Lotus of Dreamy Forgetfulness Series. Installment #02
In Homers “Odyssey” Zeus blows the ship to the island of Lotus Eaters where, there is no joy without calm. Some of his men consume the fruit of the strange tree, and they refuse to leave the island, instead choosing to stay with the lotus eating islanders in careless retirement.
Work in Progress revisited
Born Day
I usually stay on a subject for a series of takes and sketches. I’ve reached the finish line on this one.
It is Yours
This is a funny little landscape that I did almost unconsciously, and quit when I knew it was enough. It’s a little prize of the process we honor every hard working day, and so very interesting in a subtle and simple way.
Detail of Black Baldies
I feel this is a strong image of Iowa farm life.
Black Baldies
Latest works. Colors are just starting to change.
Untitled Pasture 03
Untitled Pasture 02
Untitled pasture 01
Art World
Portrait of a Young Lady
I have always drawn the faces of people. I just love to capture them looking at you. I’ve been away from portraiture for a while but, I’m back!
A little reel to prepare for First Friday of the Month Event.
Odebolt Elevator
Untitled Vines
Every painting is a reach in a new direction, or place. The journey is made until the brush is put down. Beginning, middle, end.
Athene
A proposed pedestrian bridge to be built in West Des Moines connecting Racoon River Park and Walnut Woods State Park. Very exciting.
Crop Reserve
Because I constructed this large painting straight from the imagination, you can count me out as a realist. From the imagination counts as romanticism, and if it’s considered not ugly, it then falls within Romantic Positivism.
It’s a work in progress, as I see a few things, a few values worth fixing. Maybe some telephone poles. This painting is rather big at 4 feet by 5 feet and, I am getting very comfortable with the larger paintings. Stay tuned!
Amish Harvestore
This is an exciting painting. The unified palette being the reasoning. I gravitate toward the secondary colors, and this one is exemplary of this focus on orange, green, and violet, with a touch of blue in the Harvestore Silo and the faded alizarin crimson in the sky and along the horizon.
Brenton Farm Silos
What if…
Port
You see yourself as a shipwreck, but we see the treasures glowing inside, beneath the oceans in your eyes.
Night and the City
This sky will not let me go. So, one more before I attempt a larger one. Enjoy.
West End
This is a larger version of my last painting. It was an hour later, so the pedestrians have changed!
Light Rain
I consider 10th and Locust, in downtown Des Moines, my neighborhood as it is three blocks from my studio. There is a rather decent Italian restaurant in the building you are looking at, along with the Temple Theater venue for live events. Across the street to the west is a Starbucks, also very convenient for coffee and meetings.
Portrait of an Unidentified Apostle with Donkey
12×24 oil on canvas
Keeping in mind that I am not a religious person, in fact, a recovering catholic as I’ve often called myself, I’ve often imagined illustrating a book of the Bible. Daunting, but probably fun. From what I understand, the apostles were all teenagers when they were called. This is why I would paint them as very young looking, as in the depiction here.
Serenity Close
It took me a long time to finish this painting. And it’s brighter, with more of a pastel palette than this photo delivers. It’s so soft and quiet. One you have to see in person to allow it to complete its sentiments of the day.
Farm
While I am studying and formulating my next ideas of the landscape and it’s language, I’ve delved in to highly abstracted observations in an effort to better solidify my path and direction. I did a series of three 12×12 square panels, this being the first. Stay tuned!
Sauk Country
The latest in the Iowa Sheep series which has found a home in a private collection.
The rural Iowa land scape continues to inspire this painter to reap the beautiful and true from the simplicity of eternal forms that surround us.
Escape from the Dog Park
Dogs on the loose break all the boundaries.
Young Frida Kahlo
From a black and white reference photo taken before her devastating accident. Enjoy.
Chagall II
Kind of like drinking, the funny thing about painting is that you never really get the hang of it. I say this with all seriousness aside, for this is not really a good comparison, nor is it true. My college mates and I had many a laugh about how we failed at drinking most all the time.
The thing is, when it comes to painting, often one’s expectations are explicitly clear but results vary, and this keeps us in the painting game.
Once you have 10,000 hours in, the question still arises, “what to paint?” And, “How shall I paint it?” “What art movement or style am I most closely related to?” But why do we pay attention to such reductive talk? It is because we we are often asked such questions by galleries and collectors.
In the end, one must choose how to make the greatest impact, paint your most astonishing art, give birth to your most honest contribution to the vitality of any art form or style. This is what we are charged with delivering. Like they ask in the business world, “what is your deliverable?” In the case of painting, it’s your honest self.
Diego and Frida
Late in 2021, I began to study the methods and approach to painting of Paul Cezanne more intensely. Here was a man who proclaimed “With an apple, I will astonish Paris.” This attitude struck me as the very attitude necessary to face a blank canvas every day. To choose to paint, to make the sacrifices, one must work very hard to do the very best work one is capable of, and one must believe that a serious contribution can be made to the very vitality of the art of painting in our time. This is what I am attempting to do. I cannot let any part of history escape me in order to fortify and support each brush stoke I choose to make. I know this probably all sounds so serious, and it is, for the work one does with the mind, the heart, and the hand together, is the most profound work one can do.
Having said all that, I had some fun in attempting to focus on the muses of Cezanne with this effort. I found an old black and white photo of this historic couple to practice some of the aforementioned methodologies, and this is where I shall stop on this one and move on to a new blank canvas. This is my first painting of the year 2022. Cheers.
The New Horizon
2021 has come to a close with this last plein air study. Here I now stand, after following the rules of classical form for five years of painting, at the precipice of knowing that what lies ahead is toward the abstract. In order to avoid painting another ho-hum landscape, albeit ones with sound harmony and sensibilities, I’ve realized, from recent in-depth studies of the principles of Cezanne, that true art comes from the corruption and violation of nature. One is otherwise making a replica or a copy of her. The picture is the thing. It is its own thing. A two dimensional thing that must be created in its own right. I’m setting out. Wish me luck.
Air Show
I started this air show painting last week, from a reference photo of a Colorado friend who attended the show earlier this month. Though the scale was a bit daunting at only 11×14, I finally got around to finishing.
Racoon River in Water Works
This is the result of a two-hour plein air excursion in Des Moines. Though it is not finished, I am hesitant to paint on it again to guard against altering its freshness.
R16 and 270th. Dallas County Sunrise.
I’ve been driving around the surrounding farmlands this summer and fall, taking photos of future paintings. I just got around to facing, and finishing this one, after starting it a month ago, and being intimidated by the light in it.
Flock B
Farm life subject matter is something not to be overlooked in Iowa. In fact, it’s a challenge not to consider when looking for striking compositions here in the prairie.
Dallas Country Grain
To quote, and borrow a phrase from baseball, “I’m seeing the ball really well right now,” I’ve got 10,000 hours invested in getting to where I can execute this sky and palette. If you go out early in the morning and look, meditate, on the color in the atmosphere, you will soon see that, starting at the horizon, all six colors (the three primary, the three secondary) are there. Follow me: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. From bottom to top. So fun to paint. Enjoy.
East of Adel
I am beginning to drive around the state of Iowa more often, scouting for those special places that may be painted in the early or late light of day. This was a barn just east of Adel, Iowa that I found interesting enough to sketch out. The light, however, is the thing I am after.
Gray’s Lake Plein Air sketch
This year, in many ways, is a moving year. One major change in my orbit is to get outside and paint more plein air. Here is a little one hour sketch, in order to begin to stretch the plein air muscles.
River Walk Center Street
Three night paint out in Des Moines, in association with Mainframe Studios, Salmagundi, and the Polk County Conservation, began at the Lauridsen Skate Park downtown. This was my Friday night entry.
Lost Creek
I’ve lived in the State of Colorado twice in my lifetime. Loveland Co. for one year in 1975, before returning to Iowa to attend University. (ISU.) Then again for six years throughout the late 1980’s in Colorado Springs Co. I knew the state well and, often miss the open range feel of the West.
Morning Walk revisited
I painted this very view only a week ago at 12×12. Here is a larger version. I enjoyed the sky and clouds from this vantage point during an early morning rain shower skirting by to the east.
Travelers
This is a Work in Progress. Des Moines is, or was, home of the Travelers Life Insurance Company and, this rooftop sign is an iconic part of the downtown cityscape. I’ve still to add the letters under the Umbrella and, it is basically all the farther I intend to take it. Cheers.
Since first posting, I’ve updated the painting to include the letters of the classic sign.
jeff klisares 