Original artwork description:

The pencil I have always known and it feels so natural in my hand. In this work I am particularly interested in exploring the mark making similar to Van Gogh's landscape drawings in ink. I practice copying Rafael drawings regularly and am very interested in correct contour. There is a vantage point near where I live of Mt. St. Helena that interested me in this landscape with figure.

This is a study and practice drawing for an oil painting composition in my 'Odalisque series'. In this body of work I am interested in the commonalities and the contrasts that compare the female figure to the coastal hills where I live. Similarities between the two are how the lines rhyme in ways that are a sublime invitation to the imagination, and how the fire adapted, San Francisco Bay Area landscape of renewal compares naturally to a Mother Nature figure. Differences that I think about are how the fragility of flesh contrasts starkly next to rocky volcanic land and sun parched vegetation of twisted manzanita, ticks and poison oak. I also notice our ephemeral inevitability. She is poised next to the old-as-the-hills existential element of time.

Darren Jekel is an American oil painter from California and is emerging steadily in the bay area art scene. Solo exhibitions of his paintings include the notable Dolby Chadwick gallery in San Francisco and he has over 300 of his professional level artworks cataloged. Jekel is in the historical position of being both the student of the ground breaking pop artist, Wayne Thiebaud, and the leading member of the Bay Area Figurative movement, Manuel Neri. Jekel has an MFA degree in painting from the prestigious art school, Maryland Institute, College of Art. He is married with two daughters and lives in California’s wine growing region just north of San Francisco.

Materials used:

Pencil

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