Jeffrey Ackerman (b. 1963) studied painting and sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis, and SUNY at Albany. His work was in the CMCA Biennial 2020 and in 2017 he had a solo exhibition at the Maine Jewish Museum in Portland. His work has also been included in two-person shows and group exhibitions in Maine and New York City, including a two-person show in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1988. From 2015 – 2018 he served on the editorial board of the Maine Arts Journal writing essays on art and culture, and has written art criticism for the Portland based journal, The Chart.
My paintings depict dramas that take place in psychic landscapes or imagined architectural spaces; the sculptures represent the fanciful creatures and characters that might inhabit these invented worlds. Transcendent longings and dark impulses are both suggested in my imagery. The actors in these dramas are often menacing, at times seductive, but always a bit enigmatic. Money flashes and sparkles. Drinks are poured, strange elixirs that simultaneously imply pleasure and poison—powerful tonic or deadly toxin. Transformations and metamorphoses are simultaneously subject matter and process—a metaphor of all creation, cosmic and human.