Take Me To The River
Octavia Art Gallery | New Orleans
May 30 – June 20, 2015
Jeffrey Pitt’s intricate paintings evolved out of the artist’s desire to interpret culture based on artistic and ceremonial expression. With a B.A. in Anthropology, Pitt has a great interest in traveling and experiencing other cultures and places in an effort to observe what makes them unique. Particularly, Pitt explores how various cultures’ artistic expressions relate to their environments, beliefs, religions, and means of subsistence. Pitt has developed his own visual lexicon which can be applied to current situations and arranged in paintings such that the viewer can find symbols and icons buried on top of and over images. The more one engages the paintings, the more images that will appear. In most of Pitt’s work, a single line threads it’s way through the image, creating an improvised composition as well as a context layered with symbols, people, animals, or ideas.
Born in 1972 in Wichita, Kansas, Pitt currently lives and works in New Orleans. He attended Tulane University and studied “Alternative Foundation” at the University College of London’s Slade school of Fine Art. His work is included in many notable private and public collections, such as the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Wichita Center for the Arts, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
