Jeff Ferst with Art Allies at the AC

While I was doing the good work of my other favourite job out in Vancouver two weeks ago, my brother David G. White was representing makebright with the camera over at the Accelerator Centre.  Artist Jeff Ferst was rocking the Accelerator Centre as part of the on-going and awesome series invented by Art Allies.

All paintings in this post are oil on canvas by Jeff (buy his stuff), and all photos are Dave White’s.

Here’s Jeff.  His show at the AC is wrapping up at the end of March, so get over there and check it out.  I just read in the Art Allies newsletter that Jeff is heading off to Arizona for 6 months to paint the desert. 

For those of you new to the story, this show is one in the series that Art Allies makes possible and that alternate between the Accelerator Centre and the Communitech Hub.  In each show, the show sponsor commits to buying one of the pieces for the hosting venue.  In this case, the sponsor, Communitech, bought *3* pieces!  And that’s how artists get paid, yo.

Snacks!  Serious snacks.

Here are the 3 pieces…

that Communitech…

purchased.  The impasto technique of laying on bold and thick layers of paint is evident here.  I love it.  Jeff said that some of his paintings can take up to a year to dry.

Always fun to visit the AC.  Great space with lots of light.

One thing you’ll never get from looking at photos of art is the real sense of scale.  This massive beauty is 84 x 60 inches!  That’s seven feet wide, people!

Photos of paintings also limit you to one point of view.  When I stand in front of a real live painting, I can move left to right and (to some degree) up and down, and see the light hitting the painting in an infinite number of ways.  And that’s particularly relevant to Jeff’s work that is almost sculptural in its depth.

And photos have all kinds of limitations in representing the colours of the painting.  That yellow you’re seeing in the photo above in your web browser on your screen isn’t the yellow that you’ll see in the honest-to-goodness painting.  I guess what I’m saying is…

you don’t really know what the work looks like…

until you see the actual work.  So think up a reason to visit the Accelerator Centre this week.  Heck, I’ll help you: they’re going to be showing a live stream of the the TEDxWaterloo event on Wednesday, so drop by the AC, check out the art, take a peek at TEDx, and tell me what you thought of both in the comments below.

Thanks to my brohemus for covering this one.

Happy making,
DW