After moving from Wyoming to Southern California in 1959, Jeffery Geller began taking art classes in junior high and high school. He continued with classes in painting and sculpture while at California State University Northridge, where he completed his BA. In graduate school at Duke University he worked for three semesters with the painter Vernon Pratt before relocating to his current position. His approach to art benefited from discussions with Irwin Kremen, an artist and psychology professor at Duke, and with Paul Ziff, an artist and philosophy professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Beginning in 1983 he worked closely with the Art Department at the University of North Carolina Pembroke while teaching philosophy and logic. From 1983 to his retirement in 2018, he worked with Ralph Steeds, Paul Van Zandt, Janette Hopper, and Scott Ziegler.
Several of Geller’s works have been included in juried exhibits. He had a solo show at the Armory Gallery in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 2006. His works were exhibited in 2014 at the Hogarth Biannual in New York City and in 2015 at the SARUS Art Exhibit in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2018 he was the featured artist at Art in Bloom Gallery in Wilmington, North Carolina.
From paintings that represent couples in dance embrace to the relatively static genre of still life, Geller tries to capture in two or three dimensions the dynamic potential that characterizes time. He enjoys painting various types of plants, because he regards them as explosions in slow motion, on the move, though almost imperceptibly. Over the last several years, he has worked in ceramics and in collage and montage. Recently he has turned increasingly to painting directly on glass, mainly reverse glass painting. He also enjoys, as the galleries attest, painting mannequins.
Exhibitions
