About Darren Jekel
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Education
1989 - 1991
Maryland Art Institute, College of Art
1980 - 1983
University of California at Davis
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Previous events
Event: The Edge of Possible
Dates: Feb. 27, 2026 - March 9, 2026
Juried group show
Event: Dynamics of Color
Dates: Jan. 9, 2026 - Feb. 13, 2026
Juried group show.
Event: Configurations
Dates: Dec. 12, 2025 - March 9, 2026
Juried exhibition of art.
Event: A Celebration of Our Resilience
Dates: Sept. 19, 2025 - Dec. 5, 2025
Juried group show
Event: Haven
Dates: Aug. 1, 2025 - Sept. 26, 2025
Juried group show
Event: My World in Blue
Dates: July 7, 2025 - Aug. 22, 2025
Juried group show
Event: Hands Meet Earth
Dates: April 12, 2025 - June 17, 2025
Group Show
Event: Entaglement
Dates: April 7, 2025 - June 27, 2025
Juried group show
Event: 16th Annual 50/50 Show
Dates: Sept. 9, 2024 - Oct. 14, 2024
Juried group exhibition
Event: Right in Front of Me
Dates: May 13, 2024 - Aug. 16, 2024
Juried group exhibition
Event: Pastel Panache'
Dates: April 4, 2024 - May 25, 2024
Juried group show
Event: Contemporary Drawings
Dates: Feb. 5, 2024 - March 22, 2024
Juried group exhibition
Event: Outside In
Dates: Sept. 4, 2023 - Dec. 8, 2023
Juried group show
Event: Imprints
Dates: May 12, 2023 - Aug. 24, 2023
Juried group show
Event: Imprints
Dates: Jan. 13, 2023 - March 24, 2023
Juried group show
Event: ‘New Works by Darren Jekel’
Dates: March 6, 1998 - April 26, 1998
Selected artist for grand openning show by Lisa Chadwick. Solo exhibition.
Event: Contemporay Works
Dates: March 12, 1997 - April 26, 1997
New Paintings exhibited
Event: Darren Jekel and Justin Lee
Dates: April 9, 1991 - April 18, 1991
Fox Building, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Biography
I love the messy brush that makes a neat stroke. An American artist, from the San Francisco Bay Area, I got to know Wayne Thiebaud at UC Davis. “Good artists borrow and great artists steal”, so with bright light I stole his 'heavy brush' sensuality and his California color. Oil is my preferred medium and I often mix it up with a kitchen blender, using eggs and other mixtures to make a mayonnaise-like medium that I call ‘emulsion’. I experiment with materials restlessly- recklessly? I stole Anselm Kiefer. Now, when I paint I feel like an alchemist searching for an unreachable prize- a paradise that I ache and pine for. I zoom in up close with a grid and graphically search and search. But of course, there is no paradise. Facing that truth is where the focus of much of my work comes through, with pictures that are physical, modern, earnest, and unsentimental. Originally my paintings were completely non-objective, abstract. They soon switched to landscapes with far off horizons and narratives of dark longing. Currently dancing females have emerged center stage and my painting appears to be moving beyond ‘post-modernism’ to a place less cynical and ironic. Now I am interested in a back to basics, meta-modern earnestness. But still the most astoundingly deep and existential thrill for me comes when I recognize that I have finished a painting and find that my art is not mine; it just grew on the wall.
