DON JACOT

“I identify myself with Photorealism, an art movement forty some years into its development, but with historical precedents in the origins of optics and photography. Though I have done purely realist paintings, I prefer the clarity and dependability of photo information, especially for landscapes. Working from my own photos but not a slave to them, I feel free to alter perspective, color, the shapes and positions of objects, buildings, etc, in a painting, or to combine elements from sets of photos.

I often compose images, which no camera could take. The possibilities are endless, and new artistic developments will parallel progress in photography, optics, and computers. I have used and relied on digital cameras and computer photo programs since they first became available to me in the late nineties. I have worked in acrylics, oils, gouache, watercolor, and charcoal, but concentrate on oil painting. I paint with regular artists’ brushes, only rarely have I used airbrush for touches in a few paintings, and do not emphasize the brushwork itself. Through the nineteen eighties my subject matter was the urban landscape. Influenced by Social Realism I chose commonplace subjects and aging structures, intending to portray their pathos and dignity.

In the nineties I took a different approach to the urban environment or the culture in general, and focused in on the shop window as a motif for a series of paintings. There I found unusual and complex arrays of consumer items, toys, etc, old and new, mundane or exotic, but always interesting and beautiful to me. I have edited things out of photographed store window settings and then inserted the objects I wanted to see. Sometimes I fabricated whole images of window displays and storefront exteriors.

Next I telescoped the frame of reference further down to close-up views of groups of objects, appliances, etc, still within a store window context. By complement and by contrast I combined things from different eras, objects with similar functions or with nostalgic, whimsical, or symbolic value, and thereby reflected the culture around me. Beyond that I wanted to share my fascination with the forms of the things themselves, their colors and surfaces, and their appearances under different lighting, angles, or lens lengths.

After 2003 I concentrated on closeup views of toys or sometimes a single toy, eliminating the store window frame of reference. These paintings carried a fantasy, narrative, or iconic quality, removed from real situation. I completed a series of small pictures of this type, and since 2006 have switched to a succession of six foot paintings showing toys blown up several times their actual size.

I am beginning a new group of paintings of various sizes which will combine still life with landscape, model sets of my own construction with toys, and mid-20th century America with my own fiction or narrative.”

– Don Jacot

2014 – “Photorealism: The Everyday Illuminated,” Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California

2013 – “Photorealism Revisited,” Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

2012 – “Photorealism,” Painting with a Camera, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

2011 – “Works From The Louis K. and Susan P. Meisel Collection Photorealism,” New York, New York

2011 – “The New York Project Paintings of the City,” New York, New York

2008 – “Peter Maier and Recent Acquisitions,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

2008 – “2008 Biennial: Contemporary American Realism,” Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana

2008 – “Recent Acquisitions,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

2008 – “Painted Faces – Post Modern Portraits,” Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York

2007 – “Photorealism Today,” Plus One Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2007 – “Group Show,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

2006 – “Summer Suite,” Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

2005 – “Contemporary American Realism VIII,” MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa, Oklahoma

2004 – “The New Photorealists,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

2003 – “Group Show,” David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

2003 – “Iperrealisti,” Chiostro Del Bramante, Rome, Italy

2002 – “Urban Landscapes,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

2001 – “Near and Far,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

1999 – “See the USA,” National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.

1998 – “Photorealism,” Jaffe Baker Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida

1997 – “The New Photorealists,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

1996 – “New Work,” Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

1996 – “Attention to Detail (Realism in All Forms),” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

1995/96 – “The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed,” The Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan

1995 – “The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

1995 – “The Chair: Deconstructed/Reconstructed,” Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

1994 – “An American Vision: Photorealism Paintings,” Margulies Taplin Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida

1993 – “Really, Real, Realism Show,” Jack Wright Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida

1992 – “Photorealism for Nashville Collections,” Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee

1992 – “The Mailbox Show,” The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Detroit, Michigan

1991 – “The Mailbox Show,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, New York

1990 – “Don Jacot – El Structures,” Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

1988 – “Detroit Landscapes,” Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

1985 – “Urban Realism,” Xochipilli Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

Phaidon – “First Photorealism Retrospective comes to the UK”

Oklahoma Gazette, Visual Arts – “Lens Crafters” by Rod Lott