Jeff Kromer interview

Place of Birth: Reading, Pa

 

Jeff Kromer: as a child somewhere around age of 9-10yrs. old I found I was interested in creating things, drawing and copying from comics.

Initially I wanted to work in movies and do special effects and make-up designs..from there things grew and I believe that making art in the end chose me.

 

J.K.: I work in acrylic, graphite, charcoals, pastels, watercolor, printmaking, some oils now and then.

I use canvas, masonite, board, paper, collage, mylar. I have no one set of rules to create, works can take hours or months, sit for years before i get back to them...I work on roughly 10-12 pcs. at a time, depending on my mood I may want to drip or splash paint to start a surface or I make collage ideas for an eventual drawing.

I work with brushes, rags, fingers, wiping and breaking the paint back down before I add more and so on most people don't know that under many of the
paintings are multiple images that are built upon each other one line or mark may take me on a completely different path than I expected.

It's important for people to know that the act of creating is just as important as the finished product. i consider my style to be abstract figurative/surreal.

J.K.: I had a wonderful childhood with 2 loving parents that are still together, most if it was growing up in a log cabin in the woods at the top of a mountain, exploring, building forts, hiking, all this was food for creativity.

 

J.K.: Very cathartic, a release...energy movement to create and be in the moment and see a work surprise you as you struggle with it is living. I've worked hard at times on a surface that I've ripped the paper and had bruises on my fingers, I don't always have the energy for this though, sometimes it is frenetic and other times peaceful.

 

J.K.: I do have spiritual beliefs but other than life and deaths themes I don't believe my work is affected by them.

 

J.K.: I really enjoy reading about the private lives of artists, this really helps the viewer understand what the artist was feeling, what their life must have been like. some of my themes are very personal that nobody will know about because i keep them private but other works just are, movement fun lines marks color...in this creative process when I get that "a-haa" moment and the work tells me where to go with it is one of the most incredible experiences and i appreciate that because it doesn't happen all the time.

 

J.K.: This is a great question! I think the same reason we watch a horror film or can't seem to slow down and look at a car accident...we almost don't want to but something won't let us turn away. this reminds me Black Cat of something I saw in Florence...a man on a bike wrecked in the middle of the street, he got up and was ok but I stayed long enough to watch the scene and around the corner came about 20 or so police on horses mostly white ones, have a picture of it and will never forget this image!

 

J.K.: Some themes are very personal, others are basic...life/death, womb as tomb, "twomb" series which I'm eventually bringing back on paper, hierarchies, kings and queens, clowns..(my father dressed as a clown to perform his magic acts) lately I've been having fun with painting animals.

 

J.K.: I do think about how people will react to my work and mostly hope to get an emotional response whether negative or positive, as long as it's not bland. as a visual artist we don't really get a lot of people jumping up and down clapping and cheering when they see our work like they would at a concert. but if I can evoke any kind of emotion from a viewer then I'm happy to have connected with them.

 

J.K.: Most challenging works are commissions, people have an idea in their head and want you to create it as opposed to letting the artist be to create it how we see and feel about it.

 

J.K.: Breakthrough moments...high school, a stippling of a steam engine that won me a scholarship for school and "African Man" which can be seen on my website. In general though, learning that it was ok to break free from conventional thought, our work is limited only by our imagination.

 

J.K.: Yes, i have done portraits of people in a photo-realistic manner and I think doing good quality limited edition prints are just fine because not everyone can afford an original. people should be able to buy something they really like. Selling giclee or iris prints isn't selling out it's selling.

 

J.K.: Hopefully in the next few years I can start building, carving and welding steel, I also would like to create more interactive creations where the viewer can manipulate a piece to re-create the image on a daily basis to their liking...like a 3 dimensional jig-saw puzzle.

Last thing that important for people to know about me is that I'm a 2-dimensional sculptor with the imagery, the image is built many times upon itself to reach an ending result.

 

 

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