JEFFREY LONG, Paintings

Description

JEFFREY LONG, PAINTINGS
Copyright 1997
Paperback, 69 pages
Essays by:
Neeli Cherkovski
Steven Jenkins

Sensuous, meditative in tone, and subtly architectural, the paintings of Jeffrey Long reflect an
odyssey through time and memory, form and color. One finds in this artist’s work a double
flame: deftly applied blacks, ochres, burnt browns, suggesting a world of natural processes,
together with a painterly language that mirrors the dispersion brought on by urban culture. It is
a striking combination. The resulting fire sends off stored-up energy.

Long comes from a lineage of painters standing at that point at which pure abstraction meets
the representational. This is a struggle that has gone on since the early days of abstract
painting. The complex organization of Long’s work suggests that he is building his own codes,
contrasting one dark tone with another, pushing in a luminous swath of light against a darker
background, unearthing a language of many layers.

Neeli Cherkovsk