15 BYTES: Jeff Hein—Portrait of a Man as a Young Artist (interview with Suan Rossiter). 2002

While brisk, autumn weather finally crept into Utah at the end of October, young Utah artist Jeff Hein allowed Artists of Utah to sneak into his Salt Lake City home and studio:

The smell of linseed oil mixes with that of the Heins’ pet rabbit, which scurries through the home during our interview.  In the front room a few works are hanging.  A handful of small works are also in the studio, and a painting, just begun, hangs on the wall.  Otherwise, the place seems sparse, even for a well-ordered artist like Hein.  Most of Jeff’s works are currently hanging in the Magpie Gallery, a few blocks from his home.

Prior to the interview, we stopped by to see the show, which features a number of large portraits.  While there, Annette Dunfored, co-worker of Magpie Gallery, tells us that one landscape in the show was sold while it was sill being hung.  We are discussing Jeff’s work when a customer asks after one of the portraits.  She’s flustered for a moment and has to explain that she’s not sure what the price is.  Jeff has not bothered to establish prices for portraits.  After all, who would want to buy a painting of someone they did not know?

When, a few minutes later, we stop in at Jeff’s home, he is pleased with the news.  Not only for the opportunity for a sale, but because, as we learn in our interview, one of his primary goals right now is to paint pictures of people that go beyond portraiture and have a broader appeal.

Jeff Hein is an energetic individual, an evident excitement for what he does animates his body and his conversation.  In his last year of studies at the University of Utah, he is a bit older than the average college senior.  Hein, a New York native, first headed west in 1992 to attend Ricks College in Idaho.  He returned to New York for a year to work before returning to the West – This time to Salt Lake City, where he served as a missionary for the LDS Church.

Hein’s mission met a premature end, however, when he developed cancer.  He recountsw rather nonchalantly how he battled cancer for a year and half and, due to “complications,” ended losing most of his digestive tract.  “After that I dated my wife for about six months in New York while I got ready for school and to come out here to do who knows what.  I knew I wanted to do art, but I had no money so it was kind of, what next?  So I got married and moved out here.  Utah offered me really good funding because of my illness…so I decided to go to school here.”

That was 1998.  Hein is currently finishing his senior year at the University of Utah, but, as we learned, he rarely sees the inside of a classroom. 

AOU:  Now, you mentioned that you’re doing independent study right now.

HEIN:  Yeah, I’m in my senior year right now.  My teachers know that I work hard, and I just feel like it slows me down to go to school because they’re teahing me stuff that I’ve learned already.  They recognize that too.

AOU:  So they’re giving you freedom?

HEIN:  Oh yeah; its gret.  They say, “Oh we’ll come check your stuff out at the end of the year.”  I’ve never gotten more work done, and they know it, so that’s pretty much why it’s working out.

AOU:  So what, overall, was your educational experience like at the University?

HEIN:  I learned a lot there, but I have to say that my biggest advantage was going to Ricks, my first year at Ricks.  Maybe that’s because I never took any art classes in High School.  So Ricks was my first year really studying and it was this huge jump.  Maybe that’s why.  But I feel like the U has been tugging me back and forth.

AOU:  In what way?

HEIN:  I want to paint a certain way, and my tendency is to paint a certain way.  Even though it’s good to experiment with different things, they’ve come and gone, and I don’t know how much they have helped me.  Maybe a little.  The thing is, it’s always been the same direction for me.  I had the same direction when I started as when I finished.  So, it had to be done, its been an education experience, but I’m done with it now.

AOU:  So what would you say your direction is?

HEIN:  I guess what I’m talking about basically is that the U is really loose, abstract;  they’re….especially now—the staff has changed—they’re really concerned about your art making some kind of political statement.  I’m interested in concept in my paintings but not to the point where I’m making some kind of statement about the world.  It’s really not my interest.  I just want to paint people.  If you’re an artist and also have the talent to really get involved in those ideas and really get passionate about it that’s great, but I don’t see how it’s possible to be a really good artist, devote all your time to art, and devote an equal amount of time to understanding the world and making an educated statement about it.  I don’t see how it’s possible.  Maybe someone could do it, but for me, as an artist, I think my job is to make beautiful paintings.  But that wasn’t my experience at the U.  I’ve even had people tell me I’m not an artist because I just paint things.  The funny thing is they’ll use the word concept, and are concepts in all my paintings, maybe more maybe less, but there’s a concept.

AOU:  Maybe you’ve got 70% art and 30% concept while they’ve got 70% concept and 30% art?

HEIN:  Yeah, maybe.  My concepts are about the art.  It’s about creating emotion with light and color and trying to create certain moods.  That’s concept in my mind.

Although still not finished with his degree, Hein has already produced portrait work that shows an adroit control of his medium, a sensitive eye for color, and an energetic sympathy for his subjects.  Mary Picket Pierson of the Magpie Gallery purchased a portrait of her daughter from the artist, and, along with Dunford, has expressed her continued confidence in this artist’s work by giving him the show now hanging in the gallery.  Along with portraits, both large and small, the show also exhibits a number of small landscapes.

AOU:  What about the landscapes.  Is that a recent thing for you?

HEIN:  Yeah, I just started doing that about six months ago.  It’s a way to go out and hang out with my buddy who I paint with and just to loosen up.  Because portraiture, is like brain surgery.  Even though it’s fun, it’s excruciating sometimes.  But no none cares if a tree is accurate to a sixteenth of an inch.  So going outdoors and painting is a nice way to say, “Man I’m gonna just start throwing paint on the thing.”  It’s not that I don’t enjoy painting people.  I’d much rather do that, but sometimes I need a break.

AOU:  Has working that way, working outside, affected the way you paint?

HEIN:  Yeah.  The thing is, when I paint outside I always have my figure painting in mind, I’m always thinking of new ways to apply paint.  For instance, the way I paint a group of trees in the background, I’ll use that brushstroke and put it into a figure.  I’m always trying to experiment with brushstroke because I think that’s critical, whether painting a landscape or a portrait.

AOU:  What has been your experience so far with doing the portraits?

HEIN:  It’s funny, with portraiture, it can look dead on like the person, but if it’s not the way the client sees the person—that smile they always do or the twinkle in the eye that they always have—then to them it’s not the person.  So that’s a major struggle.  I’ve been thinking about different ways to tackle that problem.  I’m probably going to start trying to go out to dinner with the people I’m painting or something.  Just spend a day with them.  Get to know them.  Because with people I know it’s different.  My wife is no problem.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the features.  It has to do with I know who she is.  I’ll continue to do portraiture because it’s secure, but my passion is just painting people the way I see them, the way I want to.

AOU:  What do you hope for your art, where do you see it going?

HEIN:  I’m kind of going in two different directions right now.  What I want to do is start painting peole and painting heir feature, and capturing character in their face, but leaving it ambiguous enough that it’s interesting to other people.  For example, the painting of my wife [in the photograph below]—she got up in the morning and got dressed to go jogging, and to me it was immediately an interesting painting—take a shot of a woman about to go on a run.  I’d like to do more of that; say, a person playing a guitar on a street corner.  It’s a portrait of that person but it’s more about what they’re doing than who they are.

AOU:  So do you see it being about the general or the specific?

HEIN:  Well, it’s about that guitar player.  I want to capture their personality and their face.  A lot of painters will paint a figure and they will leave the face completely unresolved to kind of separate it from the viewer.  But what I want to do is to paint a person where I can paint their face and really concentrate on their face; have it be a portrait of that person.  But then I want it to be about them and what they do rather than “This is my cousin Joe”… I don’t have all the answers.  I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet.  I guess I want to make something that’s interesting to everybody and still is a specific face.

AOU:  Ant the other direction?

HEIN:  I’m starting to do some narrative stuff.  The first two things I’m doing are New Testament things, which in Utah should have a good audience.

AOU:  But do you fear getting labeled an LDS artist?

HEIN:  I don’t think so; it’s not going to be my thing.  And I’m going to do them different.  I want to paint them like I paint my portraits and put a contemporary feel to them, not concentrate on the details of the costumes.  I’m more interested in the expression of the characters.  I’ll be more concerned with colors and fabrics that help my painting composition than making sure they’re authentic…I want it to be an extension of what I’m doing with my portraits.

Hein’s excitement for the future is obvious.  Despite his cordial welcome and eagerness to chat, one can not help feeling that we are intruding, taking up precious time which he could be using to develop his ideas.  He is a child given a hundred dollar bill and set free in a toy store.  He has the skills and the concepts and now needs only the time to give them flesh.

AOU:  So, when you finish school, do you have plans to go back to New York?  

HEIN:  I used to swear to it, but, you know, things happen.  I get taken in ifferent directions all the time.  I never expected to buy anything in Utah, but then we bought this condo. 

AOU:  You put down roots?

HEIN:  Exactly.  Things are going good here so…we’ll see.  I want to go back home, but I’ll stick around here for awhile.

AOU:  What are your hopes?  What are you going to do to go about “making it?”

HEIN:  That’s a dang good question…I’m just gonna keep painting and hope it happens.

Hein and Jones Paint Landscape and Figure Larger Than Life, By Cami Nelson

Three life-sized hipsters, baggy pants, facial hair, the works.  One has a violin and another a banjo.  They hang, their images that is, in a painted triptych, in Williams Fine Art Gallery.  The painting, “Afternoon on the Porch,” was painted by the University of Utah’s own recently graduated painter, Jeffrey Hein.  On the wall across from this welcoming painting is a large landscape with painterly marks, coming close to abstract quality.  This landscape, “Bonneville,” is only one of the many quality works by Jason Jones.  Jones is also a recent graduate from the U.

Hein’s deft maneuvering of paint and academic control of composition combine with Jones’ dynamic painterly pieces for a really incredible gallery experience.  In fact, I found each of the paintings interesting and worth looking at (please do not underestimate the extremity of this statement.)

Each artist’s work, in its own way, is larger than life, but no in the bad way (take Disneyland or the Gateway Shopping Land, for example.)

While Hein focuses his work on the figure, Jones’ work deals primarily with landscape.  Again the combination of different styles and subject matter is refreshing and even the jolt of changing the way you look from one artist to the other is more exciting than uncomfortable.

Hein’s figurative work usually leaves the details of the background out, instead drawing dynamic and dramatic attention to the people who he draws. 

His figures include a lot of everyday subjects like a guy in a ski cap, two people in jeans back to back and even a girl in a swim suit.

Of those quotidian works, “June 21st” was my favorite. The painting is of a girl in a polka dot bikini top and a wrap around skirt. She holds a cup with the word SODA on it.  It sounds pretty ordinary as I explain it in words, but, as with every painting, the magic is in the visual presentation. The blue shadow of her blue sunglasses is gorgeous; the shadow of her body on the background is exquisite, academic and strangely exciting.  And the most dynamic play with academic painting is the use of foreshortening, where the foot, on closer examination, is one-third of the body because it is closer to the viewer.

Hein also does religious figurative paintings and does them well.  If some of you are tired of the kitschy LDS religious paintings copied and proliferated by the millions, Hein’s work is very refreshing.  “Healing Faith,” a painting of four figures in biblical dress, is phenomenal.  While the crowding of the figures in what looks like parallel lines could have been a disaster for some painters, Hein carries it off with skill.  The woman’s hand reaches out of a space Hein has so carefully created that it appears to be capable of touching you. 

Jones’ landscapes resist some of the academic painting that Hein uses.  Jones’ work borderlines on abstraction and sometimes what you find up close is very different from what you find far away.  Take “Train Yard,” for example.  From a few feet back, you see mountains with a train running in front.  Pretty simple.

But when you get close, you notice that the mountains are really just brown and yellow and green marks all right next to each other. It’s really fun to look at Jones’ paintings.

One of Jones’ more spectacular paintings, “1700 South,” is a winter scene, and the most spectacular part is the light source and the rendering of the light.  Ah, words to explain the visual.  I guess I’m to the part where I just say, words are not going to cut it, go see the work. 

The show runs through May 30, noon to 5 p.m. everyday at the Williams Fine Art gallery, 60 E. South Temple, Main Lobby.