Jacob A. Pfeiffer has built a solid following for paintings that are executed with exacting technical skill but filled with levity—literally and figuratively—whimsy and wit, and sometimes, a deeper underlying message to decode.
The title of Pfeiffer’s next solo show at Meyer Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is Inner Child, which references a theme he’s become known for exploring since it emerged 15 years ago from a very specific memory.
His daughter, then 5 years old, came home from school and was so excited because she had learned there was candy at the top of the food pyramid!
Inner Child, oil, 16 x 8 in.
“She really thought there was an actual pyramid she could climb and there would be candy on top,” relates Pfeiffer. “That day, I went out and bought a couple hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and literally built a food pyramid with candy on top, and painted it. Everything that I’ve been doing since comes from that one experience with my daughter…it’s that kind of naïve, imaginative view of things that got me really excited, and I’ve tried to infuse that into my work ever since. Adults don’t often see what kids notice…it’s pretty easy to overlook things with how busy we are, how heavy the world is, and the anxiety you can feel day to day. My paintings are not trying to amplify what we’re experiencing in the world. I’m trying to create a respite from that.”
Something to Chew On, oil, 30 x 30 in.
There is also a piece in the show titled Inner Child. It depicts Russian nesting dolls, unnested, and floating in space. To create the illusion, he organized the doll pieces on the floor, on softened clay so they wouldn’t roll around, lit them from the side, and painted the composition from above.
“By painting things realistically, the more imaginative elements somehow have more credibility…the more convincing the object is, the more interesting it becomes when I bend the rules, when I make something levitate, or place incongruous objects side-by-side,” Pfeiffer explains. “It’s not the end point but the vehicle for which I’m trying to convey.”
Yield to Temptation, oil, 16 x 8 in.
A lot of what he is trying to convey is about the importance of connecting with our inner child, symbolized by the tiniest of the Russian dolls that rests, whole, at the heart of all the others.
“Life can layer on callousness and resentment and the seriousness, and we can kind of forget what it’s like to look at the world through a joyous lens like a child would,” he adds.
His piece Ground Ball takes this idea a step further, and contains one of the artist’s signature puns. A baseball hovers over a meat grinder—the baseball a symbol of childhood, the meat grinder a metaphor for the transition into adulthood. “There is this innocence before we go through the meatgrinder of life,” says Pfeiffer, adding that this is his second Ground Ballpainting. The first featured a baseball suspended over a coffee grinder. It was his only painting successfully stolen out of a gallery, an event, he says, “was kind of flattering but also kind of weird-feeling.”
Ground Ball, oil, 16 x 12 in.
His piece Something to Chew On took upwards of five months to complete, given its size and complexity. Rife with meaning, it features a gumball machine next to globe sitting atop a book, while gumballs spill out onto the table and floor. “It’s like we’ve been using the earth as a vending a since the Industrial Revolution and now we’re running out of gumballs, so to speak,” he explains. “We’ve treated the earth like an unlimited resource, and we’re seeing how that’s playing out…The book The Order of the Things suggests things are out of whack…the balance of everything isn’t quite right. It’s almost like there’s been a devolution of our species. People aren’t relying on the scientific method anymore, experts aren’t being trusted…That little ball falling off the globe is a reference to flat earthers…[a theory] that is just bonkers to me.”
Love All, oil, 6 x 12 in.
Another pleasurable dichotomy in Pfeiffer’s work is the seriousness with which he approaches painting and the light-heartedness of his compositions.
“I take painting incredibly seriously,” he says, “but the paintings themselves don’t have to be serious. Growing up, I assumed to be an artist you had to pour your heart and soul and all this angst into your work, but you can also pour love and humor and whimsy into it as well. To me, that’s very healing-—and a lot of fun.”
Pickle Ball, oil, 10 x 12 in.
Pfeiffer will be in attendance for an opening reception on Friday, October 9, from 4 to 6 p.m. —
Meyer Gallery 225 Canyon Road • Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 983-1434 • www.meyergalleries.com
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