By Diane Pitts

All of My Love, 72” x 54”, oil on linen, 2009

Jered Sprecher is a visual artist who explores what he calls the “handwriting” of humankind. The vocabulary that he draws from, he explains, resides in the vast array of marks and images in our surroundings. From this “vocabulary” he collects visual motifs and imports them into his paintings and drawings.

Sprecher is currently an assistant professor in the UT Knoxville School of Art. He paints prolifically and has exhibited in numerous galleries around the country. Before coming to UT, he taught at both Princeton and Cornell. In 2003, his studio was funded through the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program. He was an artist in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2007. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts in 2009.

Inchoate, 72” x 54”, oil on linen, 2009

During his fellowship year, Sprecher plans to work on a series of large-scale paintings that build upon his interest in using the tradition of painting to bring together disparate forms of image-making. Throughout this process he will focus on the “efforts to communicate” embedded in the images and objects that he uses. Sprecher took time out to explain his concept and how he wants to expand it in the coming year.

“My paintings and drawings focus on remnants and fragments that are captured in the midst of change and are edited and fused together in the space of painting.”

Learning, 20” x 16”, oil on canvas, 2009

“My current work ranges from small, intimate work to mid-sized pieces. I am comfortable within this range and I appreciate the relationship that these paintings hold with the scale of the human body.”

Humanity’s varied ‘handwriting’ attempts to communicate meaning through history, art, design, crafts, and other endeavors. These infinite amounts of images are pregnant with a longing to communicate.”

“I wish to push the boundaries of my studio practice by introducing paintings that operate on a grand or cinematic scale. I want to have a greater understanding of how my smaller, intimate paintings can exist in the same room as the larger, immersive ones.”

Shadow Boxer, 20” x 16”, oil on canvas, 2009

“I cannot merely recreate my previous paintings on a monumental scale; I need to investigate the way paint speaks differently on a larger platform. I need to rethink my methods, as if I am a poet who wants to write a novel.”

“The Guggenheim Fellowship will allow me to make more ambitious work in size and scale. Exploring this larger format will push me in new directions that will inform my smaller paintings and create an expanded scale in which the viewer engages the paintings.”

For more information and artwork, visit Jered Sprecher’s web site.

Solo Exhibitions

Syncopate, 42” x 36”, oil on linen, 2009

Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago
Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York
The Art Gallery of Knoxville
The Cress Gallery, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston

Group Exhibitions

The Drawing Center, New York
Brooklyn Academy of Music (Next Next Art), New York
Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville
Des Moines Art Center
Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids
Arthouse, Austin
Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles
Kinkead Contemporary; Los Angeles

Sprecher’s work is represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston; and Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles.