Original artwork description:

I had a good friend that volunteered to model for me and I delighted in making many works with her as my inspiration and this is one of them. This is a study and practice drawing for an oil painting composition in my 'Odalisque series' that dramatically is lit in wonderful magically colored light. 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 on paper

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