Around Columbia
if ART Gallery: Jeff Donovan Exhibition
COLUMBIA, SC - August 11, 2010 - Since the overwhelming success of his mid-career retrospective in January this year, Columbia, S.C., artist Jeff Donovan has been on fire. The ceramicist and painter completed some 15 new paintings that will be shown in this upcoming exhibition at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St, Columbia, SC. The exhibition, Post-Retrospective Perspective, will run from August 13 – September 4, 2010; the opening reception is Friday, August 13, 6 – 9 p.m. For more information, contact if ART Gallery owner Wim Roefs at (803) 238-2351 or wroefs@sc.rr.com.
Most of the new paintings feature the psychologically ambiguous figures with a somewhat invented physiology that Donovan is known for. But while the artist's current cast of characters is as subdued as usual, the new paintings are especially lively. Donovan's uses bright colors or high contrasts, continuing the trend that was visible in the most recent paintings included in his January retrospective. His characters have volume and strong graphic qualities, often filling most of the space. The complex surfaces are radiant, carefully built up with gouache, charcoal, pastels and sometimes acrylics. Very few of the paintings have the earth tones or monochromatic qualities that characterized many of Donovan's paintings of the past several years.
The new exhibition testifies to the burst of energy and inspiration that Donovan has gathered from the success of his January retrospective. That exhibition featured almost 100 art works, the majority on loan from collectors, and saw brisk sales.
Donovan (b. 1957) has been on the Columbia art scene for three decades. Especially in the past 15 years, Donovan has been a mainstay on that scene. He has exhibited widely and often throughout the Carolinas. The Columbia Museum of Art in 2009 acquired Donovan's sculpture Dream Boater. Donovan was born in Millford, Del. He studied at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Fla., and the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C., where he studied with Christina Cordova.
Initially working exclusively as a painter, Donovan in 2004 added ceramics to his repertoire. After the retrospective he decided to focus on painting again for the time being. In both art forms, Donovan has developed a unique, recognizable style and approach to his subject matter, which tends to be the figure. His figures and the context they find themselves in are characterized by a wicked combination of wackiness and humor, solitude and lonesomeness, naturalist rendering and physiological incorrectness, cartoon-like and pensive qualities, expressiveness and disconnectedness, activity and stillness. The air of Surrealism or Magic-Realism his paintings and sculptures emit is as casual as the figures' refusal to make eye contact with the viewer. And with Donovan's figures it's often hard to tell whether they are deeply depressed or perfectly at peace with themselves and the world. Donovan's clay works involve the same psychologically charged but ambiguous figures with dubious physiological qualities that feature in his paintings.
