Featured Artist Jed Sutter

Painter Jed Sutter captures the heart of Boston city life and local landscapes in his unique realistic style. Visit his website to see more of his portfolio.

 

 

I grew up in the then-undiscovered fishing town of Kennebunkport, Maine, in the 1960s and 70s. My mother was an artist and my father was an engineer. My mom still lives in Kennebunkport. She is nearing ninety years old and is still producing work for local galleries.

 

 

Despite this, for most of my life I never turned toward visual art as a calling. I grew up drawing, enjoying art class and feeling artistic, but never I considered myself an artist, per se.

 

 

My father’s engineering influence and my perspective drawing from college served me well. I did some trompe l’oeils in my home, but despite this I never really expressed myself further as an artist.

 

 

Decades passed. In my mid-fifties, I suddenly felt an urge to start painting.

 

 

At that point I had wished for years that I could paint subjects from photos I composed with my camera lens. I wondered if my mother’s legacy would be her paintings on the walls, or if it was time for me to pick up the torch. In 2016, I finally grabbed my first paintbrush since grammar school.

 

 

I am largely self-taught. Though I have attended a half-day gouache workshop and a three-day watercolor workshop, most of my art education has been through the process of simply painting. I spent a great deal of time learning to look at art and at my surroundings in a very different way.

 

 

I have adopted a realistic style. Many people mistake my art for photography. I’ve never tried to make a painting look like a photograph, but time and again, when I feel I have finished, the work looks quite realistic. For subject matter, I’m drawn to the seaside of my youth, and also to urban landscapes, bridges and the local, aging trolley cars that rumble behind my house just south of Boston, Massachusetts.

 

 

I work in acrylic, gouache and watercolor. I’ll be drawn to a set of colors or an interesting shape or to a scene I’d like to capture, but one that’s a bit off the bell curve for other artists.

 

 

I entered my first competition in 2018 and won a blue ribbon for excellence at the 3rd Annual Gallery 334 Exhibition. I held my first show at the Newton Free Library in July, 2018 and in October, 2019 showed all new work at the Milton, Massachusetts Public Library.

 

 

I applied for and was granted full artist membership to the Copley Society of Art in early 2019. One of the works I have shown there, “Things Will Never be the Same,” earned an Award of Merit. I have been juried into the North Shore Arts Association in Gloucester, Massachusetts as of the 2020 calendar year. I’m also a member of the Switch Co-op Gallery in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.

 

Artist Jed Sutter invites you to follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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