Jeff Kowatch (Bilingual edition)

Kowatch’s demanding yet subtle technique combines glazing from the Old Masters with the Abstractionists’ controlled use of color

Los Angeles–born, Brussels–based painter Jeff Kowatch (born 1965) builds up to 100 layers of paint on his canvas, which he then scrapes and sands to create calm yet deep compositions filled with bubbling swaths of color.

Heir to the great Flemish masters, American peinter Jeff Kowatch has borrowed from them their impeccable glazing technique. He may apply as many as a hundred layers of paint to the canvas, tirelessly scraping, sanding, and re-covering each one to create abstract works that are enlivened by a multitude of colorful circles. These same sensual shapes push and repel each other in his paintings, which he creates with oilbars on Dibond. From this gentle chaos emerges an abundance and a harmony that are almost mystical.

"Painting is alchemy: subsuming base minerals with a brush into service in the pursuit of representing the Absolute, God, the Sublime - call it what you want... how could this tragedy not be comical?" Jeff Kowatch