I am interested in exploring the components of the visual experience. Why and how certain visual combinations affect us in deeply profound ways is the focus of my work. My current work has been most influenced by the work of the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, specifically the “monumental”, large scale paintings of this genre. I am know that I am standing on the shoulders of giants and geniuses. I am not trying to imitate but to excavate. 

 In all my work, a sense of the physical is very important. Brush in paint, paint on canvas. All painting is a mirage.  A two-dimensional reproduction of an image real or imagined. While I have created representational works in the past, today I am focused on the challenge of reconstructing a tactile emotionally charged experience, full of energy and joy that intimates the “feeling” of a specific visual experience without using any representational symbols or words.

My work investigates the slippery intersection between the digital world and reality. Specifically, I am interested in how we experience nature through technology. We are currently living in a digital age where we predominantly experience the natural world through our phones, computers, and television screens. This distance from the reality of nature distorts our perspective and creates a disconnect. As species decline and fade into memory, so many animals and organisms now have a stronger presence in the digital world than in the natural world. 

I use systems of nature as a point of departure to create sculptural work. With my “Re-things”, I create three-dimensional sculptural representations of two-dimensional images of nature I find online. I build my objects pixel by pixel in an overtly laborious process in direct contrast to the slipperiness and speed of the digital world. I am interested in how each pixel plays an important role in the identity of the object, the same way each cell plays a crucial role in the identity of an organism. Through this process of pixelation, details become distilled, distorted, or deleted. 

For my 2019 show Systems and Omens at Craighead Green Gallery, I am exploring extinction, evolution, animal lore,and the collision of digital and biological systems to pose the question: “What is nature becoming?”  

"In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines." - George Dyson

Jeff Uffelman was born in York, Pennsylvania and grew up in Harrisburg. When he was a young boy, his grandparents returned from living in Paris and filled his imagination with books about art and prints from the Louvre collection. He knew then he wanted to be an artist. He went to Millersville University to study under Robert Nelson, a renowned print maker who had gone to the Art Institute of Chicago. Nelson knew such greats as Willem DeKooning, Roy Lichenstein, and Robert Motherwell and opened Jeff's mind to a broader world of art.

Uffelman enjoyed his first artistic recognition from the Philadelphia Print Club, where he won the Ann Tumis Sumy award for a silk screen callled "Animals in a Tropical Landscape". At the same time, he won first place in the Harrisburg Art Association for his Portrait of a Young Woman. He gave up his job as an architectural draftsman to explore art making full time and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to do just that.

After a couple years of experimentation, he found his niche painting sharp focused still lifes. He was invited to show at LewAllen Contemporary where his reputation grew. In 2018, he had a one man ten year retrospective of his work at The Evansville Museum of Art in Indiana.

He now lives on the Oregon Coast, continues to paint from 6:30 a.m. each day, taking breaks to boat, hike and build guitars.