04 Sep In the Studio: The Potent Alchemy of Jeff Legg’s Light and Shadow

With Jeff Legg’s still-life Divine Balance, you cannot avert your eyes because the longer one looks, the more mesmerizing the subjects become. They don’t defy reason, but they do defy gravity — the same as the composition dares to challenge what the mind expects to find in a fine-art genre devoted purely to aesthetic experience.

Speaking of the duality of the contents in the space, and how some visual cues keep him grounded, Legg says, “A very early figurative painting of my oldest son in costume looms above me, reminding me of who I am and what’s truly important in life.”

At once tranquil and soothing, the painting is simultaneously a rebellion against convention; it represents an extension of Old World tradition yet is avant-garde — cosmic in an almost Stephen Hawking-like way, as it invites us to consider bigger existential questions.

It’s Legg engaging us when he is at the height of his provocative power.

A selection of the artist’s works, which will debut at his 2025 solo exhibition, Alchemy of Light & Shadow, at the Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin, Missouri.

For a writer, it’s always been strange to encounter artists at the start of mid-career, when they are just hitting their strides and producing visions well beyond the ability of their normal chronological age. One wonders where they’ll be in the future; will they continue to grow? Can they sustain a course of progression when so many external voices are telling them to remain in a changeless comfort zone of early success?

We have an inspiring answer when it comes to Legg. More than 20 years ago, shortly after this new millennium began, I wrote a profile about him for a national art magazine. His work then as a classically-trained portrait and still-life painter working in oil had made him a talent to collect, and to watch. Legg was praised for being contemporary, yet his methods were rooted in those of the Old Masters, whose techniques delivered vivid illusions unbound by any sense of space or time.

Some paintings are in a continuous state of becoming: Leviathan gets its finishing touches — “a painting I started a decade ago but that only recently revealed to me what it needed,” Legg says. “This is a common process for my work, which often springs from the imagination.”

Recently, on the eve of a new exhibition opening in his home region, not far from the Ozarks, Legg and I reconnected. As he spoke from his studio in Rogers, Arkansas, where his creative space was bathed in a gloam of natural light and surrounded by visual and mental stimuli, it was as if we were picking up where we had left off.

Legg’s first-ever solo show at the Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin, Missouri, Alchemy of Light & Shadow, comprises a carefully curated mix of older and new works. The event runs through October 25, and Divine Balance is a new piece that appears in the show.

Tools of the visual alchemist’s trade.

In a foreword for an accompanying catalog, Dr. Patrick McKee, professor of philosophy emeritus at Colorado State University, invokes two words that are regularly associated with Legg’s work. First is his uncanny ability to create “sublime” (awe-inspiring) imagery; second is that his paintings emanate a quality of “transcendence” (realms of being that exist beyond our physical tactile world).

Still lifes were a statement by the masters, presaging the Enlightenment, in which ordinary objects could be presented in a way that transformed them into ethereal meditations on what the artist describes as “spirit.” Legg also bestows his work with an interjection of his interest in elemental naturalism. Divine Balance could be about spaceships, the miracle of the universe, or just a sheer exaltation of the glory of color, light, and shadow.

“My studio is filled with props I’ve picked up from flea markets, my travels abroad, and walks in the forest. The multitude of shapes, textures, and colors inspires ideas and options for future paintings,” Legg observes.

With Forest Remnants, we see moth and animal skull, life and death, decay and rejuvenation on the understory floor; with Night Hog, a feral boar rests on a stump beneath the starry constellations, its appeal magnetic, not macabre. In Leviathan, a dinosaur skull floats amid the in-between of stardust and fire, connecting us to a geologic scale that makes us minuscule yet part of a grander temporary flow. And with two more pieces in the exhibition, Brass with Leaves and Orchid with Blue, we encounter Legg the still-life colorist in top form as a representational Impressionist, and in the latter, reflecting on the dual grace and fragility of life on this planet.

In jest, the painter says, “A suit of armor awaits its yet-to-be-determined wearer.”

Western art impresario Tim Newton has been following Legg’s work for decades, dating back to an exhibition of Impressionists that Newton curated at the Salmagundi Club in New York City. Alchemy of Light & Shadow affirms that Legg never stopped evolving. “His work is very sophisticated, and at the same time, he’s contemporary but unafraid to be traditional. That garners a lot of respect,” Newton says. “For all of the fancy bells and whistles that modern age artists want to employ, when you instead are unafraid to stand up and speak the truth in beauty, it is always a statement. And kudos to Jeff Legg. He’s very modern and very edgy while employing lessons from across centuries. It’s wonderful when an artist has such reach.”

Forever smitten with how artists of any medium organize their studios, I asked Legg to elaborate on his place of refuge. “I designed the space. I wanted it to feel like a sanctuary,” he explains. “The interior has 19-foot-tall ceilings at the peak, and symmetrical arches on both sides. I designed the north window that was loosely based on N.C. Wyeth’s studio palladium-style north window.”

Another painting’s composition begins its genesis at the drawing table.“Drawing has always been the foundational element for all my work — a practice my mentor instilled in me years ago,” Legg says.

Dark, neutral-hued walls allow north light to be focused and set a somber mood, which, when he’s in the zone, enables total concentration on the works in progress. But, in terms of Legg’s studio being conducive to creativity when he’s not on an intense deadline, he adds: “I have lots of props. Some unusual things, like dinosaur skulls, fossils, bones and skulls of various animals, life masks of famous people like Boris Karloff, birds’ nests, seashells, a full suit of armor, many vases and vessels, of course… the list goes on. I guess I like stuff. Most people who visit say it feels like a museum.”

As Legg can attest, artists who are constantly challenging themselves can also get ahead of “the market.” While pushing one’s boundaries is critical to achieving mastery, it doesn’t always reward artists with immediate monetary concerns, such as paying off the mortgage and raising a family.

Finding meaning in the tactile, which his work invites all viewers to do, Legg says, “A chunk of glass contains worlds within worlds, and it’s just one of the many odd artifacts in my collection.”

Legg turned 65 years old in 2024, and “retirement” is not part of his vocabulary. His show features new works and older pieces that have never been exhibited, as well as unfinished works and studies. “I also completed a few paintings that I had started a decade or more ago and just now have gained the vision and understanding of what I wanted the pieces to say,” he explains. “It’s interesting to me that many times, the studies or ‘unfinished’ works are the best pieces. They retain the ‘spirit.’”

By saying the Old Masters represent his constant North Star, Legg isn’t kidding, nor has he chosen an easy age of pathfinders to learn from. He’s not a Neo-Luddite, who rejects the digital age, though he is a devotee of the notion that insight is divined through the struggle of trying to make visible what is not easily seen. Sure, a work “inspired by” DaVinci or Donatello could be produced by any AI server, but few living, breathing humans can painstakingly yield paintings worthy of comparison.

“‘Art,’ for me, is not about being polished and perfect,” Legg says. “In my estimation, beauty abounds in our imperfections. The spirit of the work is what gives it longevity, if one is fortunate enough for their work to stand the test of time. I detest the slick work that seems so prevalent and lauded as great. It has no spirit and no depth. Rembrandt always comes to mind when I think of spirit. His work has a certain honesty to it. It’s a little rough around the edges, and not ‘perfect’ and certainly not slick. But, wow — the spirit of it.”

The texture of Legg’s surfaces is an alluring mixture of transparency and depth, as if one is moving through layers to arrive at the soul of a subject. It is reminiscent of the feeling one gets while looking toward the horizon during Western wildfire season and, through the smoky air, seeing extended tonal layers of mountain summits.

The effect is not accidental. Legg has long been fascinated with chiaroscuro and sfumato, which originated with Renaissance painters and involves a sophisticated approach to presenting light and shadow to set a tenor of mood while accentuating forms that drive the narrative. They are foundational, in fact, to why Legg named his show Alchemy of Light & Shadow.

“It all comes down to those two elements. The ‘alchemy’ part is how those two coexist and influence one another and how light is made manifest in darkness. The magic of alchemy is how an artist can go beyond the physical into the metaphysical or the spiritual realm through visual illusion and manipulation of color, form, values, etc.,” he says. “Darkness is, in my opinion, not the opposite of light, but the absence of light. I believe science agrees with this. Just like heat is the absence of cold. There is so much to delve into here. It can get rather philosophical and leads into the spiritual side of things — for me at least.”

Absence of light does not equate to the nothingness of a black hole. Negative space is what births the impact of illumination. Legg hopes his paintings are catalysts for our own introspection — of how we can better appreciate the here-and-now present in our time while knowing that we are sharing moments of reflection identical to those who came before and will follow.

Legg’s paintings speak to many of his personal revelations, but are not themselves protective coatings. Nonetheless, he says, “I love all things armor. I found this medieval helmet on a trip to France.”

“I want the work to have meaning — but also veiled in some mystery, for it to be a little more cerebral, perhaps. The universe is one big mystery, and I hope to scratch the surface of that a bit. You could even say that I want my work to have a spiritual quality; not in the religious sense, but in a deeper, more philosophical way, perhaps.”

Where will Legg be in another 20 years? It is an exhilarating thought. What’s certain is that as he looks westward from his studio near where his career began, his art will continue to stand on the impressive body of work that has the Old Masters as its headwaters.

Divine Balance | Oil on Aluminum | 28 x 26 inches

“I’m in the Ozark region that I love. I was drawn back to my roots. I have a lot of history in this area, going back to the Civil War. But I am a wanderer. Time will tell how long I’ll be in this place,” he says, adding, “The West calls me from time to time. I still have family in Colorado. I also love California and the ocean. I have a deep desire to paint the power of the sea. Totally sublime. I lived and painted Southern California seascapes for a continuous month a couple of years ago. I need to go back. Maybe paintings of the sea will be my next show.”

Todd Wilkinson’s writing has appeared in National Geographic, Christian Science Monitor, and The Washington Post, among other publications; toddwilkinsonwriter.com.

Based in Arkansas, Onion Studio is a photography and multimedia agency specializing in corporate and commercial visuals; onionstudio.com.