ARTIST INFORMATION

“Born in Havana, Cuba – Jake Fernández is a professional fine artist painter of nature. His collection of works are captured in a variety of mediums from oil on wood panels; on canvas or linen, to pastel, to basic graphite pencil, black & white sketch drawings all in both small to large-scale. One would wonder how an urban artist captures the very essence of nature while living in the city. His observation of nature to be able to convey order from a tangle of vines and branches in the woodland, trees, shrubs and bushes or the movement and the sounds of rippling ponds to recreate a balance of altruism and vision is a measure of his mastery of creativity, control, discipline making these qualities as his own signature and style of  landscape paintings.” – Sunil Vilas (Celebration of Landscape Art, Interview with Jake Fernández)

“Jake Fernández was introduced to landscape painting at an early age while taking private lessons from Felix Ramos. The combination of youth, being recently exiled from Cuba, and studying under a renowned Cuban landscape painter seems to have influenced his early and lasting interest in the subject. Paradoxically, as he developed his own vision, the subject matter itself, the specific site or place that the landscape is of, became considerably less important than how it is represented.

At the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, Jake Fernández expanded his knowledge of landscape painting from Giotto to Arshile Gorky. Notably, as a student he always approached the art of his predecessors with artistic inquisitiveness, rather than mimicry. Years of living in New York City after graduate school completed his artistic education and led to his first mature works in 1980. Since then, Fernández has developed an exquisite mastery of his craft (be it oil, pastel, or photo-collage) and a unique artistic language. He works in a zone between representation and abstraction, the study from nature (aided by photography) and the analysis of representation itself, illusion and mark making. Along these lines his landscapes may be divided into three categories: sites, composites, and fields. The “Sites”, as the word implies, depicts a specific site. “Composites” are compositions based on different views from one or more sites. “Fields” are undifferentiated images vaguely suggestive of landscapes.” – Dr. Juan A. Martinez (Jake Fernández: Sites and Composites Catalogue Essay)