Inviting Expanses: Art by Jeanie Gebhart
Oil painter Jeanie Gebhart creates abstract paintings using inviting expanses of pastel blues, yellows and purples. The artist favors a palette knife rather than a brush, leading to paintings that combine thick, viscous layers of oil paint with the hard-edged cut lines inherent to the tool.
I like being able to see the progression of Jeanie’s style in the images on her portfolio website. The artist’s earlier paintings seemed to incorporate more complex combinations of shape and color, creating a sense that there might be a figure hiding among the planes of color. In more recent works, the artist has focused her paintings down to a more simplified precision, while the occasional hint of a floral or still-life figure still emerges. I wonder how Jeanie’s work has continued to progress in recent months.
The painting gallery on Jeanie's art website
As we saw in our previous feature of Jeanie’s blocky, colorful abstractions, some of her paintings almost seem to follow a grid-like pattern. I enjoy the tension between this tendency, and the naturally smooth, buttery texture of the artist’s medium of oil paint.
