Art Chartow

South Branch Chicago River - Original Oil Painting, River, Sky, Industrial Area

2018

This intimate woodland scene connects to Aeling’s lifelong exploration of the hidden, overlooked spaces within larger landscapes. The twisting vines and dense verticals show his fascination with natural complexity, reminiscent of his early interest in organic forms and his deep study of drawing from life. The luminous clearing in the distance creates a path of visual escape—one of Aeling’s characteristic compositional strategies, reflecting his belief that landscapes should guide the viewer through space as a lived experience, not merely a view. Jeff Aeling Tangled Tree oil on panel 24h x 16w in 60.96h x 40.64w cm JAE056 Jeff Aeling (1958–2025): The Sky Remembers Through Jeff Aeling’s eyes, the landscape becomes a world shaped as much by air as by earth. In works such as North of Las Vegas, NM and Pond Near St. Cloud, MN, he balances the quiet structure of plains and wetlands with skies alive in constant motion. His mastery of atmosphere is unmistakable in Light Pillars (2023) and Light Pillar (2023), where rare optical events turn night into architecture. Even intimate scenes like Crabapple, Dogwoods, and Red Bud find their emotional power under skies that lend the land its shifting character. Aeling’s winters in Hawaii deepened his sensitivity to movement and weather. Surfing taught him to read the rhythm of the ocean, a knowledge reflected in Wave, Kauai (2018), where a breaking wave becomes a luminous wall of force. In Volcano (2023), he channels the islands’ elemental drama, linking fire, vapor, and sky through the same atmospheric vocabulary found in his plains paintings...

In this marsh painting, Aeling captures the interplay of water, grass, and sky with exceptional subtlety, echoing his ongoing study of the Missouri and Mississippi river deltas. The ...