JEFF HEIN, UTAH ARTIST

Last night I was invited to attend the open gallery at Jeff Hein's Salt Lake gallery and studio. He has several new works on display that will be featured in the New York Armory Show.

Here are Susan Petersen, my daughter-in-law, and her friend Jen Hein, Jeff's wife. They live in the same LDS ward in Salt Lake City.

I couldn't get Jen to actually pose with her husband, but I managed to grab this shot of them while they scmoozed with guests. Jen and Jeff first met while they were serving LDS church missions in Utah. They both grew up in New York state, she in Rochester, and he in Windsor, which is just up the Hudson River from NYC. Incidentally, Jen posed as the model for at least two of Jeff's paintings, which you can view at http://www.jeffreyhein.com/ . See if you can find them.

Here Susan and her husband Christian sit to watch a portion of the featured demo video "Painting the First Shade".

Jeff scored the cover of this year's Spring Salon catalogue of the Springville Museum of Art.

Here is one of the featured new works.

These new paintings will be featured later this month at the New York Armory Show.

He has a distictive, instantly recognizable style. Amazingly, he never studied painting until he got into college. Incidentally, he has studied at Ricks College in Idaho (now Brigham Young University Idaho), Salt Lake Community College, and University of Utah.

I asked Jeff what his policy was regarding photography in his gallery, and he seemed puzzled. He admitted he didn't actually have a policy.

I mentioned to Jeff that I have a photoblog, and that I had included a photo of one of his works in my post about the Spring Salon of the Springville Art Museum. He remembered seeing my blog because I had sent him an email with a link to it. (I'm a shameless self promoter).

Jeff's a quick study. He responded, "Well, here's the new policy--as long as you provide a link to my website on your blog, you can shoot all you want". It's a great policy. And as you may have noticed, I have thoroughly complied with the policy.

This lady is one of Jeff's students at his Academy of Art, posing with her works. I regret that I neglected to get her name, but I believe she posed as a subject for one of Jeff's paintings in 2002. If I'm not mistaken, there is an article about Jeff and this lady in one of the publications featured on Jeff's website. Here's a link to the website: http://www.jeffreyhein.com/ .

This is my photograph of Jeff's work "12 Shades" as it was displayed at the Spring Salon of the Springville Museum of Art earlier this year. Here's a link to that post: http://blog648.blogspot.com/2007/05/spring-salon-at-springville-museum-of.html

Be sure to check out Jeff's website. There's a lot of fascinating stuff there.