Katharine Dufault Art

Carefully ordered patterns, geometric shapes and delicate lines in light blue, lime green, indigo, pink and aqua on a luminous golden yellow background. Signed, dated and titled on v...

In this larger treatment of the light-pillar phenomenon, Aeling demonstrates his mastery of night atmospherics. The bright vertical beam—pure, white, and nearly architectural—cuts through a heavy indigo sky, reflecting the artist’s fascination with moments when the environment becomes momentarily structured by light. His winters in cold climates provided ample opportunities to see such displays, and he painted them with the same meditative intensity he applied to Hawaiian sunsets and surf. In all these subjects, Aeling returned to a central theme: the sky as an evolving organism, capable of sudden, transcendent gestures. Jeff Aeling Light Pillar oil on panel 14h x 10w in 35.56h x 25.40w cm JAE034 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. Though often compared to American landscape painters like Church and Bierstadt, Aeling’s work engages modernity in subtle ways. He began his paintings with the camera—driving for hours to capture a fleeting alignment of cloud, light, and terrain. In the studio, he removed all traces of people or infrastructure, preserving the landscape as a pure, uncontrollable presence. This blend of tradition and contemporary practice allowed him to honor the past while speaking clearly to the present. Together, these works—whether a crashing wave, a blooming tree, a volcanic plume, or a column of winter light—form a portrait of the world as Aeling experienced it: vast, luminous, and alive with change. The Sky Remembers is both a tribute and an invitation to see the land with the reverence he carried throughout his life. Jeff Aeling (1958-2025) Iowa City, IA Represented in Chicago by Gallery VICTOR Education BFA, Painting and Printmaking, Kansas City Art Institute – Kansas City, MO School of the Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL Solo Exhibitions 2016 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2015 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2014 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO 2013 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2012 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2011 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2010 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Richard Demato Fine Arts Gallery - Sag Harbor, NY William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2009 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2008 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2007 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2006 Tory Folliard Gallery - Milwaukee, WI William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2005 Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL 2005 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2004 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2003 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2002 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Perimeter Gallery - New York, NY 2001 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2000 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 1999 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 1998 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO Leedy-Voulkos Art Center Gallery - Kansas City, MO Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL 1996 Grand Arts - Kansas City, MO 1994 Gallery V - Kansas City, MO 1993 Sean Kelly Gallery - Kansas City, MO 1991 Tribal Textile Gallery - Kansas City, MO Selected Group Exhibitions 2022 Kiss Me, It’s Beginning to Snow, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL 2021 2019 Es-Scape, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL Earth Wind & Fire, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL 2018 Portraits and Places: Select works from Gallery Victor Armendariz, curated by Corporate Art Advisory, Metropolitan Capital Bank, Chicago, IL Art Hamptons, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Bridgehampton, NY Front and Center, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL 2004 Art Chicago, Navy Pier...

The densely treed forest and mountain ledges of Hennen's Virginia home are the subject of this rich, highly detailed landscape painting in oil on panel. An enormous boulder presiding...

David Grossman's (US based) "Autumn Orange Leaves" is an oil on linen panel created in 2024 depicting an abstracted birch forest in autumn. About the artist: David Grossmann’s evoc...

David Grossman's (US based) "Evening View to the South West" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a wide open plain of the West with fields of...

Contemporary abstract landscape painting in oil on linen mounted on panel with carefully ordered patterns, geometric shapes and delicate lines in bright prismatic colors against a li...

Linda Lillegraven's beautiful original oil landscape "After Sunset" (2023) depicts a serene moment of a western plain at evening, with a herd of cows far in the distance. Linda Lill...

Carefully ordered patterns, geometric shapes and delicate lines in light pale peach on a teal blue background with dark indigo at the bottom. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Expl...

In this contemporary abstract landscape painting in oil on linen mounted on panel, carefully ordered patterns, geometric shapes and delicate lines in bright prismatic colors against ...

Michael Miller’s "Barn in the Rain" is a captivating oil painting on linen panel that embodies the quiet stillness of rural landscapes, in the calm before a storm. Measuring 10 x 10 ...

Aeling’s Minnesota works reflect his long engagement with the northern Midwest, where wetlands, ponds, and rolling farmland create a quieter but no less captivating atmosphere. In th...

In this contemporary encaustic (pigmented beeswax) and mixed media painting on panel, a peaceful landscape scene in shades of pale blue, canary yellow, light orange, and pale maroon ...