JETT
BLACK
NOIR ARTIST
Artist Statement
One of my favorite pastimes has always been sitting on my front porch and watching distant thunderstorms at night. The lightning illuminates the shape of the clouds and landscape creating form to an otherwise black canvas. One evening as I was enjoying a particularly exciting light show, I thought to take out an old camera of mine and see if I couldn’t capture a few images. Since I was shooting in the dark and not knowing when the lightning might strike, I wasn’t sure what I might end up with. To my amazement the images in the photos were quite abstract. I was so taken by the shapes and contrast that I chose to use these photos as a basis for a series of paintings.
That “series” of paintings soon turned into a life’s work and I have continued to recreate these thunderstorms as abstract shapes. Though I have recently been adding a touch of color, most of these paintings are studies in black and white. Like watching an old movie or a black and white television show, I’m seeking to strip away the distraction of color and recapture the feeling I got from that first photographed thunderstorm.
Jett Black Bio
Jett Black grew up in New Jersey and as a youth was a member of a motorcycle gang called the “Off Broadway Bikers Club.” Well, it wasn’t exactly a motorcycle gang, as most of the members rode scooters instead of Harleys, but they got into their share of trouble nonetheless. It was this troubled life that led the young Jett to an inner-city art program where he found an outlet for his creative energy. Soon he was painting and drawing almost every day.
Sometime in his early twenties he became a singer in a Rockabilly band called “The Rockin’ Roly Polys.” This was in the early eighties and the band had some nominal success as they toured the Midwestern and Southwestern states of America. This was when Jett first visited Oklahoma and he fell in love with the state immediately. He loved the people and the wide-open spaces, but mostly he loved the weather, particularly the springtime thunderstorms. After a couple of years with the band he decided to end his music career and devote full time to painting. He moved to the Sooner State and began painting the nighttime thunderstorms he had so enjoyed before.
Though he has recently been adding a touch of color, most of Jett’s paintings are a study in black and white. Capturing the thunderstorms as they light up the night skies over his Oklahoma home, Jett’s artworks can almost seem like abstract paintings. The enlarged images of the clouds and lightning in his works can be interpreted as delicate shapes of color that sometimes hide the true power of the painting’s subject matter.