Growing up in Middle Tennessee, Jeff Jamison’s fascination “with the look of things” began at an early age. He found art in unexpected places – “Sports and early James Bond movies got me into art. When I wasn’t playing baseball or football I was in my room drawing sports and imagery from the Bond movies.” His fascination with how light falls across objects, casting shadow, bouncing, flaring and reflecting made him attempt to capture and simulate those occurrences in pencil which eventually led Jeff to art classes. His serious art studies began at Middle Tennessee State University in 1977. “I studied pre-engineering and architectural drawing. I’m terrible with math, but I have a fascination with numbers and spatial geometry.”
In 1982, Jeff enrolled at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida graduating two years later. He immediately went to work as an editorial illustrator for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel newspaper. He worked as a courtroom sketch artist in the Manuel Noriega trials in Miami and his award-winning illustrations began gracing the pages of many national publications, including magazines and novel covers. With the coming of the computer age and the dying of the traditional illustration market, Jeff decided to focus full time on painting. His skill for accuracy and detail offered him entry into a world of representational art.
As Jeff has evolved as a painter, his work has taken on greater elements of abstraction. His careful selection of shapes and perfectly placed bright paint here and there adds elements of life and movement to his work. “Sometimes a painting creates itself, and sometimes you call it a truce. If you change any little thing in a painting, you change everything in that painting. What I have found so enjoyable is that I no longer try to control everything that happens from beginning to end. I take myself out of the whole process. I basically create problems and then correct them.”
Jeff applies his early football training and discipline to his work. “Art is the hardest thing I’ve ever done after football. I’m glad I have the discipline from athletics because every painting is game day. I love being an artist, but probably what I really love is moving paint around on a canvas and thinking”.
Jeff was born in 1958, is an associate member of the Oil Painters of America and currently resides in Middle Tennessee with his wife Judy.
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