Jay Ressler
Artist's Statement
Jay Ressler fine art photographer, as well as an encaustic and oil painter who has shown his work at many venues in Berks County and across Pennsylvania.
He is an outstanding location photographer and developing Plein Air painter, with an eye that can capture the soul of a Havana backstreet as beautifully as the sip of a hungry hummingbird, often with compelling black and white images.
In his photographic practice Jay Ressler is best known for his surrealist artistic expression that lives in layers between opposites. “I like to explore boundaries,” he explains. “Boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, between reality and imagination, between certainty and skepticism.” He does this by compositing his own photography in multiple layers to produce stunningly original, interleaved images and other photographic techniques including solarization. Using digital image manipulation software, he paints one photographic layer on top of another. He takes advantage of textures he's captured along with an array of processes for manipulating light, contrast, and color to tell the story. “Distorting and reinterpreting the literal 'machine moments' captured by the camera is as old as the art of photography,” he insists.
Jay increasingly extends his multi-layered approach to loosely rendered oil paintings inspired by details of some of his layered images as well as new, original compositions. His occasional encaustic creations utilize ancient techniques beginning with cooking his own recipes of beeswax and damar resin and applying this medium between the layers of photographic images, along with various pigmented compounds and materials to add color, texture and expression.
Any way you cut it the results are riveting. The viewer is drawn into an unfolding, dreamlike scene that might be heart-warming, haunting, gritty, poignant or magical. Sometimes, within the various layers, all of the above.
The award-winning photographer/artist has many dimensions himself. He studied advanced digital photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and advanced encaustic techniques and oil painting with leading instructors in the field. He worked as an underground coal miner, steelworker, machinist, labor and civil rights activist, copywriter and commercial printer. He has a BS in Psychology from Albright
Jay Ressler fine art photographer, as well as an encaustic and oil painter who has shown his work at many venues in Berks County and across Pennsylvania.
He is an outstanding location photographer and developing Plein Air painter, with an eye that can capture the soul of a Havana backstreet as beautifully as the sip of a hungry hummingbird, often with compelling black and white images.
In his photographic practice Jay Ressler is best known for his surrealist artistic expression that lives in layers between opposites. “I like to explore boundaries,” he explains. “Boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, between reality and imagination, between certainty and skepticism.” He does this by compositing his own photography in multiple layers to produce stunningly original, interleaved images and other photographic techniques including solarization. Using digital image manipulation software, he paints one photographic layer on top of another. He takes advantage of textures he's captured along with an array of processes for manipulating light, contrast, and color to tell the story. “Distorting and reinterpreting the literal 'machine moments' captured by the camera is as old as the art of photography,” he insists.
Jay increasingly extends his multi-layered approach to loosely rendered oil paintings inspired by details of some of his layered images as well as new, original compositions. His occasional encaustic creations utilize ancient techniques beginning with cooking his own recipes of beeswax and damar resin and applying this medium between the layers of photographic images, along with various pigmented compounds and materials to add color, texture and expression.
Any way you cut it the results are riveting. The viewer is drawn into an unfolding, dreamlike scene that might be heart-warming, haunting, gritty, poignant or magical. Sometimes, within the various layers, all of the above.
The award-winning photographer/artist has many dimensions himself. He studied advanced digital photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and advanced encaustic techniques and oil painting with leading instructors in the field. He worked as an underground coal miner, steelworker, machinist, labor and civil rights activist, copywriter and commercial printer. He has a BS in Psychology from Albright
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