My current body of my work, I think of as color field with complications. Color is the subject primarily; and secondarily, are the myriad marks, some more gestural and repetitive than others, that make their way to the surface through all the actions I take to add and then to subtract, or, as I usually think of it, first I complicate, then I simplify. I use acrylic paint and using various acrylic medium, particularly modeling paste and illuminating and metallic glazes and inks. Lately I've been using powdered and liquid graphite, as well as chemicals that cause patina and rust on copper or silver. I work on canvas, cradled hardboard, birch board or MDF (maximum density fiber board). I pour, brush, spray, coax, squirt, dripple, blow, squeeze, dry and re-wet paints of varying densities (and I sometimes use a brayer, comb or knife). I seem to remove as much as I add: sometimes with absorbent paper or sponges, and, at times, with a rotary sander. , then paint is reapplied, etched, scratched, and so on until a coherent ‘world’ appears. Leonard Bernstein’s definition of a great work of art as one which “makes you an inhabitant of that world . . that invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air” has always resonated with me as a worthwhile objective for any individual painting. Obsessed with the question, what constitutes integrity in a work of art? and desiring each painting to be an inhabitable world, the process through which these paintings evolve, is the form of my inquiry and the form of my desire. The non-objective paintings bare no relationship to anything "out there" whereas the abstract works are vaguely biomorphic, geologic, or astronomic.

How does an abstract painting begin? Usually with the desire to dwell in a certain color for a while, then another color calls, and another. For this reason, I think of myself as a colorist first, although I love line nearly as much. Then there's texture, form, rhythm, and that sticky matter of "the whole". I love how one mark leads to another and then another and how the relationships among the marks grow exponentially complex and multidimensional--intellectual beauty and scintillating rhythms, all that lost-and-foundness. I'd say painting was heady stuff, but, of course, it's body stuff as well.

My training as a painter began in high school. I attended two large schools with art departments and by the time I left, I'd been introduced to a wide variety of media, numerous concepts and techniques, and had foundational skills. In night school, as an undergrad, I studied drawing and painting first in community college then through adult ed classes at The Corcoran in Washington, D. C. I have a B.A. from Goddard College, a M.A. and a Ph.D. from Brandeis, and for many years taught at Eastern Connecticut State University and in the MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. More recently I’ve taken classes at the Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and at The New Britain Museum of American Art.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work. Since I ascribe to the notion that a work of art is an event in the mind of the perceiver, the pro re of my work depends on you.

Gray Jacobik