"The translation of the Korean 'man jok' is 'complete stillness'... something I have always tried to do with my work. Everything is moving on the outside, but the inside is completely still."
Jeff Kowatch, born in California in 1965, has lived and worked in Brussels since the early 2000s. He develops into a colorist under the influence of the great American abstract painters, from Mark Rothko to Brice Marden. As far as his technique is concerned, he was inspired by the Flemish masters, but especially Rembrandt. When he finds his recipe for linseed oil, he starts to focus on the glaze, a technique that gives his work a special depth and transparency and was a hallmark of 17th-century Flemish painting.
Jeff Kowatch uses a variety of techniques from which different series of work are created. In the Paintings series, his creative process involves glazing; the application of dozens of transparent layers of color on top of each other, systematically scraped off and painted over, slowly building up the color and intensity until the artwork is finished with an exceptionally soft-looking end result.
In addition to this technique, Jeff Kowatch is now evolving towards large formats in oil on Dibond, which is a major and very striking innovation. It allows him to create larger compositions, where the work remains uncovered and his strokes come into their own. The vibrant colors of the oil bars used (oil paint in rod form) lend themselves perfectly to the raw energy of the creation that Kowatch unleashes in this recent Drawings series.
In his different series he uses the same creative process: dozens of layers of color on top of each other, systematically scraped off for months and painted over until the artwork is finished. Kowatch works on several pastels at the same time by gradually building up the color and intensity, like the different voices of the same score.