Location: United States
PHYLLIS GILLIE JAFFE
Creative activity began early in my life, but it was not a natural talent. Good teaching brought out whatever potential I had. After a full career teaching art, public school through university levels, I moved into administration as an university art department chair then President of a Kendall College of Art and Design. Since retiring my time has been committed to art related activities: painting, travel, participation in regional arts organizations and writing a book on iconography.
My BA Art degree is from Ball State University, my doctorate in art and education from Indiana University, plus an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Kendall College of Art and Design. My seminary degrees are from Seabury Western and Wesley Seminaries. Ordained in 2009, I served three years as a hospital chaplain in the Washington, DC area. During summer months, I continue to study with Cape Cod School of Art painters.
For seven years I served as an international management consultant to developing countries establishing regional art centers and galleries in Eastern Europe and organizing women’s craft programs in Nepal and India. My own art developed through a series of continuing transformations from textile wall hangings to symbolic and decorative images, to landscape drawings and paintings.
The current work emphasizes color, texture and pattern, as I continue developing my Impressionist painting style. Paintings have won awards in juried exhibits in the mid-west and east coast, in group and one-women shows. One of my wall hanging has recently been juried into a national fiber art exhibit. Family, friends, a few museums and a stranger or two own my work. A book on contemporary trends in iconography is near completion. Specific details and exhibits are available upon request. My husband and I divide our time between Washington, DC and Salisbury, MD
This series becan after a visit to Niagara Falls last summer. From high, over the Falls, I looked down to the water's edge. There rocks were thrown on shore from the force of the passing water, scum and foam formed around the edge, algae floated in the still areas. I just had to capture in paint, what I could not touch in reality. This carried over to a visit to the Maine coast, where large boulders were thrown on the beach.
The contrast of boulders and water, seemingly so different, reminds lme that over time, the force of water always wins. Seeing the huge boulders piled up on the southern Maine coast was an irresistible subject for a painting. In this series the colors are bold, flat almost poster-like.
One painting could not satisfy my fascination with these huge boulders that seemed to stretch for miles along the Maine coast line.
This final poster-like painting comletes the series of paintings.
While to color polette for this painting is warm and calm, definying the nature of the subject and location, it also captures lthe feel for the harbor lined with large boulders.
Using a limited palette, this painting concentrates on a smaller area where water and foam are left behind after the storm.
Another painting stressing the displacement of elements following a storm. Here the boulders are moved around, as they shelter the small stones in their shadow, and sea weed is left draped over barrier.
“Niagara Shoreline”
“Maine I”
“Maine II”
“Maine III”
“Maine Coastline”
“After the Wake”
“After the Storm”
