EPHEMERAL NATURE:
celebrating Jeff Aeling
ART PRESENTS: EPHEMERAL
NATURE: celebrating Jeff Aeling
September 5 - October 25, 2025
EPHEMERAL NATURE: celebrating Jeff Aeling
Jeff Aeling’s paintings seem to hold the actual experience of being present in the landscape. They are composed of the vastness of space and the shifting drama of light and atmosphere. The sky often fills over half of the composition and clouds frequently fill the sky. Sunlight and shadow are filtered and reflected on the land and water below to hold a single, unrepeatable moment in time.
Aeling often traveled through the Flint Hills of Kansas, and the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, to experience and photograph the landscape. He followed the sun and in the late hour of light, the golden hour, watched as the landscape transformed as the sun went down. He returned to the same places again and again, documenting subtle transformations. The numerous photos that he took became the source material for the paintings in the studio.
Of his love of the landscape, Aeling explained:
“The weather and the landforms themselves are so intimately connected. You find examples of how the very large and very small relate to each other… Ideally, you feel a sense of connection, that you’re not separated from the natural world and all those processes that happen in it, happen in you, yourself. There’s something nice in the hugeness of those vistas. You have a sense of just how tiny you are in the larger scheme of things. All those shapes and forms you have in your own body. Even though you’re tiny, you have significance. You’re a part of it. You’re a microcosm of it. Nature responds to physical laws no matter the size.”
In Aeling’s paintings, viewers are transported to landscapes that hold a specific moment in time while feeling timeless. Executed with exacting clarity, they strip away manmade elements to leave only the essential dialogue of land and earth. Each painting carries the essence of Aeling’s spirit and the embodiment of his creative intellectual spark. The paintings that we are left with have become the sum of the artist’s perfect vision of the natural world, offered to the viewer as both revelation and gift.
Riverbank, Mud Island, oil on panel, 48” x 34”
Creek and Cumulus, oil on panel, 10” x 8”
Untitled Lightning Spotlight, oil on panel, 14” x 10”
Near Alton, MO Facing East,
il on panel,
o
2019, 48” x 72”
Forest with Fireflies, oil on panel, 48” x 28”
Afternoon South of Wamego, KS, oil on panel, 2019, 10” x 14”
Evening North of Alma, KS, oil on panel, 2019, 10” x 14”
Red Rock, Utah, oil
on panel, 32” x 44”
Eleven Mile River, MO, oil on panel, 2016, 72” x 48”
West of Lawrence, 2003, oil on panel, 34” x 48”
Landscape, oil on panel, 2008, 34” x 48”
Louis’ Pines, Lake Owen,
Owen, oil on panel, 34” x 48”
Sycamores, oil on panel, 2019, 48” x 34”
Sunrise Over Grasslands, oil on panel, 10” x 14”
Thunderstorm Near Junction City, KS, oil on panel, 10” x 14”
Islands on Mississippi,
oil on panel, 24” x 36”
Gerbera, oil on panel, 21” x 13”
Thunderstorm South of Wamego, KS, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
Untitled Prairie Landscape II, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
Turquoise Wave, o
on panel,
24” x 38”
Wave Near Alliomanu, Kauai,
oil on panel, 2007, 24” x 36”
Island on the Mississippi, oil
oil on panel, 2023, 34” x 48”
Last Light North of Alma, KS, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
Late Afternoon North of Alma, KS, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
Peaches, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
Nectarines, oil on panel, 8” x 10”
South from Mt. Mitchell, KS,
oil on panel, 2019, 24” x 36”
