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2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Jeff Regensburger
Bio
Jeff Regensburger received his BFA from The Ohio State University where he focused on painting, drawing and printmaking. Since graduation he has remained connected to the arts in central Ohio through music, visual arts, and writing. Jeff has lived in Ohio his entire life. That connection is evident in the work he produces and his deep appreciation for Ohio’s rich artistic heritage.
Artist Statement
For me, painting tornadoes has always had a strong conceptual component. I was initially drawn to the juxtaposition inherent in depicting these large-scale, catastrophic events in small, subtle paintings. And while the paintings are technically landscapes, they’re obviously not the sort of works one paints from direct observation. Most are derived from photographs and videos. Many borrow different elements from different photos, so that sky, tornado and ground might be culled from two or three different sources. In that regard I suppose I’ve always felt there’s a kind weird dishonesty about them; nature at its most unbridled, painted from a photograph, in hopelessly small-scale. It’s the great plein air tradition turned on its head. Yet, at the same time these works cling to a very real tradition of American landscape painting. While the process might begin with a photograph, the spirit of the paintings lie more with Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marsden Hartley, Ralph Albert Blakelock, and a host of other artists who saw both beauty and menace in the land they chose to paint. Not surprisingly, these paintings are very much rooted in place. The 110-mile stretch of I-71 that connects Columbus and Cincinnati is one that is very familiar to me. So too is the Columbus Museum of Arts wonderful collection of 19th and 20th Century American paintings. I’m not sure these paintings would exist without repeated exposure to both that particular road and that particular museum. And that’s one of art’s greatest attractions for me; the chance it affords to be part of something bigger than myself. Painting becomes a way of joining a larger dialogue, of recognizing how others perceived their world and then adding another perspective. My intention is that these paintings will, in some small way, help connect our land and our experience in it to the greater tradition of American landscape painting.
