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Jeffrey Hessing was born in Brooklyn in 1952. On the quest to discover the
place where he could live and paint, or rather, live painting, he discovered Vence. He
arrived in 1980 toting palette and easel for a three-month stay that never ended.
Hessing isn’t the first painter to settle in the South of France, but few can claim
the same success. After many years of work and a long roster of exhibitions across the
globe,
Hessing is a serious presence on the international scene. |
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| Hessing's landscapes and interiors teem with color, shape, texture, and
movement. His thick, sweeping strokes evince the grandiose gestures of the
Post-expressionists, and the most kinetic strokes show when paints with his entire body, a
heritage from the New York action painters of the 1950’s like De Kooning and Jackson
Pollock, who were among his earliest mentors. Inspired by Zen Buddhist painters, he often
oversimplifies forms to reveal a deeper interpretation of reality. Hessing’s results
have led to comparisons with Van Gogh for his landscapes, to Matisse for his arabesques,
to Cezanne for his dynamic still lifes, and to Degas for his daring points of view. |
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Despite these comparisons, Hessing’s style is unique with its
audacious colors, spontaneous energy, distortion, rebelliousness and overlying optimism --
traits that reveal his background as a youth growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in
America, an era marked by television, the Vietnam war, riots, altering perception, the
counterculture, and a devout belief in change. |
Hessing’s work is about transformation, challenging ideas and affirming the inherent
instability of matter. He paints what he sees, with the emphasis on how he sees. When
cypresses are light blue, pines are pink, grass is red and rivers are black, you know that
you’ve crossed the bridge from reality to the metaphysical and that’s where
Hessing finally leads us. |
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by J.D. |
