By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
This painting embodies one of the most personal subjects in Aeling’s oeuvre: the ocean as encountered through years of surfing Hawaii’s winter swells. In Wave, Kauai, he renders the force and translucence of a breaking wave with cinematic clarity. The rising turquoise wall, the shearing lip, and the explosive white water reflect countless hours spent watching sets form, lift, and collapse along the shore. Unlike his plains or forest paintings—where the world feels spacious and hushed—this work throbs with movement and energy. It stands as a tribute to the place that shaped his intuitive understanding of water, rhythm, and luminosity.
Jeff Aeling
Wave, Kauai, 2018
oil on panel
24h x 48w in
60.96h x 121.92w cm
FRAMED DIMENSIONS
25.25h x 49.25w in
64.14h x 125.09w cm
Jeff Aeling (1958–2025): The Sky Remembers
Through Jeff Aeling’s eyes, the landscape becomes a world shaped as much by air as by earth. In works such as North of Las Vegas, NM and Pond Near St. Cloud, MN, he balances the quiet structure of plains and wetlands with skies alive in constant motion. His mastery of atmosphere is unmistakable in Light Pillars (2023) and Light Pillar (2023), where rare optical events turn night into architecture. Even intimate scenes like Crabapple, Dogwoods, and Red Bud find their emotional power under skies that lend the land its shifting character.
Aeling’s winters in Hawaii deepened his sensitivity to movement and weather. Surfing taught him to read the rhythm of the ocean, a knowledge reflected in Wave, Kauai (2018), where a breaking wave becomes a luminous wall of force. In Volcano (2023), he channels the islands’ elemental drama, linking fire, vapor, and sky through the same atmospheric vocabulary found in his plains paintings.
Though often compared to American landscape painters like Church and Bierstadt, Aeling’s work engages modernity in subtle ways. He began his paintings with the camera—driving for hours to capture a fleeting alignment of cloud, light, and terrain. In the studio, he removed all traces of people or infrastructure, preserving the landscape as a pure, uncontrollable presence. This blend of tradition and contemporary practice allowed him to honor the past while speaking clearly to the present.
Together, these works—whether a crashing wave, a blooming tree, a volcanic plume, or a column of winter light—form a portrait of the world as Aeling experienced it: vast, luminous, and alive with change. The Sky Remembers is both a tribute and an invitation to see the land with the reverence he carried throughout his life.
Jeff Aeling
(1958-2025) Iowa City, IA
Represented in Chicago by Gallery VICTOR
Education
BFA, Painting and Printmaking, Kansas City Art Institute – Kansas City, MO
School of the Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL
Solo Exhibitions
2016 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2015 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2014 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ
Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
2013 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2012 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2011 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2010 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
Richard Demato Fine Arts Gallery - Sag Harbor, NY
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2009 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2008 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2007 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2006 Tory Folliard Gallery - Milwaukee, WI
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2005 Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN
Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
2005 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2004 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO
2003 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ
Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2002 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
Perimeter Gallery - New York, NY
2001 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ
J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
2000 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
1999 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO
1998 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM
Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center Gallery - Kansas City, MO
Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL
1996 Grand Arts - Kansas City, MO
1994 Gallery V - Kansas City, MO
1993 Sean Kelly Gallery...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Paintings