| Issue #28, October 6, 2006 |
Honoring the Artist: Jay Gebhardt
The lure of the ocean has inspired many individuals, including this week's cover artist, Jay Gebhardt. While the water remained a primary passion over the years, other preoccupations and events came before Mr. Gebhardt's turning to art as a full-time profession. The following conversation chronicles such experiences.
Q: How did your love of the ocean come about? Did you grow up near the water?
A: Yes, in Massapequa Park. I have a real affinity for the ocean. I used to surf a lot where I lived; I also worked at Gosman's when I was young, living in Montauk for a summer. Over the years, I would rent a home here in the Hamptons, I particularly remember one in the Dunes of Amagansett.
Q: You mentioned that both your parents painted although they were not professional artists. But you didn't study art in college.
A: Right. I went to SUNY at Albany and majored in economics and history. I spent twenty years on Wall Street. But my interest remained about the ocean. I got into painting because it was another way to revisit the beauty of the Hamptons; I started taking lessons at the Art Barge.
Q: What other experiences motivated your painting?
A: I also took lessons at the National Academy in New York where I live. (I left Wall Street a few years ago, although I am still involved in the financial world.) One of my teachers was Wolf Kahn, who got me interested in color. He asked me to join him as a student when he went to Florence to teach a workshop. That was in 1998; I've taken a second workshop since then in Brugge.
Q: Describe that experience with Kahn. How did it change your art?
A: I learned to paint on site; I really respond to a sense of place. He also gave me permission to use the color green, for example, when he would tell other students doing landscapes that they couldn't use green. I learned to drop all formulas so that you can use the colors you need.
Q: That experience obviously impacted on your love of traveling and painting on site.
A: Yes, I travel all over the world, taking my easel with me; I've gone every summer for five years to Italy. I paint outdoors in Pennsylvania, too, near Lancaster where my parents live. And I travel to Bonaire, Venezuela, where there is an ancient volcano.
Q: What is it about that landscape which attracts you? It's a different setting altogether from the Hamptons.
A: I'm interested in the palm trees, where the sun is sitting on the palm leaves. I like the challenge of capturing the colors; I might paint leaves yellow instead of green. "Finding" colors is spontaneous and less tedious a process.
Q: How do you feel about your art now, what new directions might you want to pursue?
A: I'm painting, painting, painting, but I want to say something about the world, like the crisis in religion. But I'm more a happy painter. I've been told that my paintings are serene.
Q: So you'd like to be a painter more than anything else?
A: It's something that gives me tremendous joy. If I had a choice between being wealthy and glamorous and being poor and painting, I would be poor and painting.
-Marion Wolberg Weiss
Mr. Gebhardt's work is at Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton. His website is: www.gebhardtart.com
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