A R T I S T S S T A T E M E N T
Growing up in a small town in the Midwest, gave me a lot of time to experience and enjoy nature, as well as small town living. For as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in expressing myself through art. My first artistic influence was a wonderful artist named Judith Kitch. Judith mentored me in the discipline of oil paintings, and that’s what added the fuel to my fire and passion for all things creative.
My high school education was a memorable exploration into many mediums of artistic expression, thanks to an accomplished instructor named Mark Hantla. Upon graduation it was time to expand my horizons and break away into new surroundings. I left the wide expansive landscapes of the Kansas prairie and joined the United States Navy. Traveling in the service gave me a chance to explore new sites and experiences that continued to drive my artwork to gravitate toward illustration airbrush and graphic arts.
After a four year tour in the Navy I was to return to school once again to study art at Fort Hayes State University. It is there I met my most influential mentor, Thomas Esser, a graphic arts professor. Under his mentorship, my work was challenged and stretched to its eventual rebirth and knowledge that limiting one’s self into only one artistic discipline was to stifle your creative soul.
After college my art continued to grow as I traveled and worked gaining new sites and memories as I went. During a brief time spent in Phoenix, Arizona, I worked in textiles, creating large scale art work in custom interior rugs. Exploring work and being able to facilitate paying bills, I began to work in the construction field and started building custom homes. Which I now see in retrospect may have both influenced and hindered my evolving art work. This time spent building homes gave me the outlet needed to create something and make a living at the same time. This eventually gave me the opportunity to move to New Mexico, where I still worked in construction as a business owner, but was reborn to rich landscapes and color that existed nowhere else I had ever seen.
Working in construction in New Mexico gave me the freedom to live an active outdoor lifestyle and gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the natural surroundings of the geography and wildlife of which I’ve come to cherish. I revel in every moment spent in the mountains and desert around the Truth or Consequences area, as if in a soothing blanket of explosive colors and shapes. Local culture and experiences living in this area have had a more profound effect on my art than any other influence I can account for. For many years of artistic layoffs not painting, it seems as though each reconnection gives me a more in depth perception of what really drives me as an artist.
Throughout my time as a painter and a sculptor most of my work has always been a commissioned piece of art and I do not have a multitude of gallery experiences as I have never had a collection of work to show. Recently I made the acquaintance of Dave Phelps, the owner of Tangent Gallery in Truth or Consequences and for the first time I have been talked out of the shadows and brought into the light to show my work. This has been an experience I will be eternally grateful to him, and will once again push my work into yet another evolution. Dave’s wisdom has shown me that the “geology of my work is my biology”.
Currently my artistic tuning fork is struck by bright vivid colors found around us every day that are not commonly expressed or intensifies in this mix of stylized landscapes of past perceptions, and a touch of real world reality subjects for a strange but interesting blend of what I would call… well I am not sure, I’ll leave that up to you, the viewer... William Jacka
My high school education was a memorable exploration into many mediums of artistic expression, thanks to an accomplished instructor named Mark Hantla. Upon graduation it was time to expand my horizons and break away into new surroundings. I left the wide expansive landscapes of the Kansas prairie and joined the United States Navy. Traveling in the service gave me a chance to explore new sites and experiences that continued to drive my artwork to gravitate toward illustration airbrush and graphic arts.
After a four year tour in the Navy I was to return to school once again to study art at Fort Hayes State University. It is there I met my most influential mentor, Thomas Esser, a graphic arts professor. Under his mentorship, my work was challenged and stretched to its eventual rebirth and knowledge that limiting one’s self into only one artistic discipline was to stifle your creative soul.
After college my art continued to grow as I traveled and worked gaining new sites and memories as I went. During a brief time spent in Phoenix, Arizona, I worked in textiles, creating large scale art work in custom interior rugs. Exploring work and being able to facilitate paying bills, I began to work in the construction field and started building custom homes. Which I now see in retrospect may have both influenced and hindered my evolving art work. This time spent building homes gave me the outlet needed to create something and make a living at the same time. This eventually gave me the opportunity to move to New Mexico, where I still worked in construction as a business owner, but was reborn to rich landscapes and color that existed nowhere else I had ever seen.
Working in construction in New Mexico gave me the freedom to live an active outdoor lifestyle and gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the natural surroundings of the geography and wildlife of which I’ve come to cherish. I revel in every moment spent in the mountains and desert around the Truth or Consequences area, as if in a soothing blanket of explosive colors and shapes. Local culture and experiences living in this area have had a more profound effect on my art than any other influence I can account for. For many years of artistic layoffs not painting, it seems as though each reconnection gives me a more in depth perception of what really drives me as an artist.
Throughout my time as a painter and a sculptor most of my work has always been a commissioned piece of art and I do not have a multitude of gallery experiences as I have never had a collection of work to show. Recently I made the acquaintance of Dave Phelps, the owner of Tangent Gallery in Truth or Consequences and for the first time I have been talked out of the shadows and brought into the light to show my work. This has been an experience I will be eternally grateful to him, and will once again push my work into yet another evolution. Dave’s wisdom has shown me that the “geology of my work is my biology”.
Currently my artistic tuning fork is struck by bright vivid colors found around us every day that are not commonly expressed or intensifies in this mix of stylized landscapes of past perceptions, and a touch of real world reality subjects for a strange but interesting blend of what I would call… well I am not sure, I’ll leave that up to you, the viewer... William Jacka
