Nationally and internationally exhibited artist Jay Pingree has an arresting one-man show at Montclair’s BrassWorks Gallery, Distorted Motion. Largely paintings of people–specifically commuters–on the move, there is nothing distorted about his revelations. He paints larger truths about our restless culture:
“I think for most people, busy equals productive; stillness equals stagnation,” Pingree said. “There is little emphasis on the importance of bing still.”
The artist has lived in Maplewood since 2010 with his wife, Karen Shelby, and their son, Jude, a junior at Columbia High School. (Shelby is a tenured art history professor at Baruch College in NYC with a side passion designing gardens). Pingree grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lived in Asheville, North Carolina for six years and studied at UNC-Asheville before heading for New York City. Pingree fast entered the city art scene with representation at NYC galleries.
Now in Maplewood, Pingree enjoys an attic studio, short on head room and long on room to think. “Having a dedicated space to make art is invaluable,” Pingree said.
Let’s linger a moment in the attic. Pingree, 50, is 6’6”, hence his “company name,” SixfootsixStudio. The studio’s peak height is 8’4”. “I have 6 feet of width where I can stand up straight, but it works for me,” Pingree said.
Access is via steep stairs. No rails. Handily, Pingree is athletic– he plays tennis, hikes, snowboards, and more. A valued member of SOMA Arts, the space is a destination on their annual studio tour.
I’ve been thinking of those stairs, the raftered walls and spatial boundaries as metaphors for Pingree’s art—full of implied movement and energy bursting out of spare backgrounds.
Let’s dig deeper into Pingree’s paintings, many here from the beautifully mounted current BrassWorks exhibit and others from his private collection and past shows. (As always, BrassWork’s excellent curator Cheryl Minden designed the show). His canvases of metro commuters range in size from 5 by 5 inches to a 2019 four-by-eight-foot past commission on wood for the Maplewood Division of Arts and Culture. (lead image). Self-portraits and intimate plein-air landscapes round out his oeuvre.
Pingree brings his deft brushwork to figures and faces that flirt with realism and to bodies and heads that dissolve into color, time, space.
Pingree talked extensively with Arts Beat about his work: “The arc of my painting life has been a deliberate attempt to break away from realism. Realism is impressive, often beautiful, but I’d rather see an artist’s take on a subject,” Pingree said. “I’m always trying to be looser, freer with my paint. My best work happens when I’m letting go.”
Subject and technique evolved hand in glove; distortion and movement freed his brushwork: My landing on “figures-in-motion” as subject matter happened organically while, as mentioned before, I was looking for ways to force my hand into a looser style,” Pingree said.
Pingree doesn’t know his subjects, nor approaches them. He declines commission requests to include family members in crowd scenes. “But some subjects I paint often, and feel I know them,” Pingree said.
Pingree’s magic is that we feel we know them, too. Curator Minden concurs: “Jay’s figures possess a quiet strength and emotional depth that invite the viewer to pause and connect,” she said.
Here’s Pingree’s working method. If in the 19th century Western artists faced the existential crisis–threat even–of photography, Pingree makes the camera his working tool. “When photographing figures, I leave the camera shutter open longer than necessary to blur and distort the forms,” Pingree said. His 2019 photograph (cover image) of an unseeing real-life commuter hurrying by Nine Commuters, his past installation in the underpass of the Maplewood train station, illustrates his technique.
Pingree likes to shoot in the Oculus at the World Trade Center, a vast transit hub. He largely uses a Canon7D camera, but in a pinch, his cell phone will do. His signature stark white backgrounds echo the bright white of the Oculus interior. His figures are anywhere or nowhere. Many have low value surrounds of color, auras really, sort of shadow paintings.
Pingree likes bird’s eye views, a favorite angle of expressionist film makers. (Make no mistake, there is a cinematic quality to Pingree’s art.) “Shooting from a higher vantage point also distorts and changes the forms,” Pingree said.
Pingree’s palette ranges from blacks and grays that melt into one another to masterful juxtapositions of contrasting colors. A bold color might rivet attention and maybe define personality as in BrassWork’s 2023, Green Dress.
Sometimes he uses distinct lines to define his figures. Arts Beat: “Why?” Pingree: “I work intuitively and try to stay open to different ways of representing a given subject. The line in the painting you mentioned was likely a spontaneous decision,” Pingree said. “Maybe I thought the painting was lacking something. I also really love lines, though, and have been trying to include them in my work lately.”
Pingree’s masterful compositions often make for emotionally charged space between the figures. There is the easy friendship of two women fueled by their morning coffee or a couple where routine has maybe replaced real connection.
The disconnect of urban life informs his larger works of multiple commuters, each alone in the crowd.
Pingree also periodically paints his self-portrait. (He sends most to his mother.) The self-portraits are a way to check in on where he’s at in his art journey.
And, pause in front of two intimate landscapes, South Mountain 11 and Jersey Shore in the BrassWorks show. Like the Impressionists who had their own ideas about transience, Pingree enjoys the challenge of plein-air painting– working outdoors with its shifting light. The South Mountain Reservation is a frequent haunt. Placid and evocative, the small pieces contrast with the hurly burly of modern life.
Learn More, See More
See www.sixfootsixstudio.com for more information.
Pingree is represented locally at the J. Nunez Gallery in Summit, New Jersey.
BrassWorks gallery, 105 Grove Street, Montclair (Monday to Friday 7 a.m.—7 p.m.) is an easily accessible, ground-floor space in a sensitively repurposed former 1930s factory. Watch for the bold address sign just past the railroad tracks when heading north on Grove Street, Montclair to park in front of the rear-property, brick structure.
