Jakki Kouffman

I work primarily in acrylic paint, which is a polymer-based medium that dries more quickly than oil paint and is equally permanent. A major advantage with faster drying time is the ability to apply multiple layers of paint in a short time in order to achieve richness of tone and brilliance of color.

Acrylic painters enjoy more than fifty liquid mediums, solid gels and opaque textural pastes. The result is a great variety of optical effects, from transparent glazes to lusciously textural marks. To that end, I use a combination of traditional brushes and painting knives, as well as silicone paint shapers to enliven the surface texture of my paintings.

My interest in surface and texture derives from an early involvement with sculpture, which was my major at Brandeis University. After graduation I was awarded a one-year work/travel fellowship to do stone carving and bronze casting in Pietrasanta, Italy. This was followed by an intense four-year period of classical portrait and figure painting, in both oil and pastel, at the Art Students League of New York. This study was largely inspired by an early exposure to Renaissance masters during my grant year in Italy.

Later in my painting career I was moved to investigate color as a vehicle to explore emotion and mood by successive Vincent Van Gogh retrospectives at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was also inspired by major shows in Paris, Boston and Cambridge of Pierre Bonnard, Andre Derain, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, as well as Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas. I have pursued bright color harmonies and purposeful composition with enthusiasm ever since.

My greatest pleasure has always been to communicate feelings or ideas to others through painting. In turn, when a person finds it desirable to live with my work, to keep it as their own, I consider it an honor and a privilege. One might even say that the gesture of acquiring my work represents a finishing touch in the act of painting.