The Plateaux of Mirrors- series statement below
Jeffrey is best known for his iconic landscapes based on Chinese paintings of the 8th and 10th centuries, The Zion Series: Plateaux of Mirrors (2010-17), a project born of his love of the western United States and his fascination with the intersection of painting and photography. His new work, a continuation of the Zion series subtitled Both Directions at Once is a deeper journey through the primordial landscapes of southern Utah and his ecstatic vision of his experiences in those spaces. As he sees it, the line between perception and hallucination is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits your perception at the moment, the bridge when one thing appears and the other disappears. This is the space he looks to create in his work. These extraordinary landscapes appear and change according to his emotions and thus reveal the magic and beauty contained therein while mirroring the qualities of the artist himself.
Zion Cayon: The Plateaux of Mirrors
This series was a true labor of love as I studied with a curator at the Met for a year and was given access to Tang and Song Dynasty artifacts and scroll paintings which inspired and informed this series. I also worked with a professor of Chinese art history at Rutgers (now passed sadly). I went to Zion National Park on the Utah/Arizona border over a 3 year period to shoot and then spent another year printing from early test prints to the finished gallery prints. A private foundation in Britain provided funding to make enormous prints and a wonderful space to show some of the Zion Mandalas.
108" x148" Zion mandala series
