Jeff A. Evans

Jeff is an award winning, plein air artist based in Rocky River, Ohio – outside of Cleveland, OH.  His work is an extension of his training and practice as an architect for 30 years.  He brings this thought, craft, and discipline to his passion for painting outdoors, while exploring the storytelling of a place.  Exploring themes with the combined cast of people, nature, and the built environment.  Jeff draws inspiration from light as it makes for sunlit shapes and planes of color and shadows in street scenes, landscapes, and everyday moments in life.  With a backpack full of easel, tripod, and painting supplies, much of HIS body of work over recent years includes paintings from a few continents, from all over the United States, and many from close to home. 

Jeff earned a BS in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Architecture (focus on urban design), from the University of Maryland.  He has been painting for 20 years, since taking a weekend workshop with the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects - while living and working in Washington DC.  Whereas a building can sometimes take years to materialize, he realizes the immediacy of putting paint to paper and the response it gives you in real time!  Taking these interests outdoors, Jeff has been juried into national plein air events, won event awards, and has been a part of group and solo exhibitions.  He participates with Cleveland Urban Sketchers, local life drawing groups, and the Friday night Pretentious Cleveland Portrait Artists.

Jeff has spent most of his career in the Washington, DC area, and now for the last decade in his native Cleveland, Ohio. Jeff has been an adjunct design critic in the UMD School of Architecture for undergraduate and graduate design studios. Throughout his career in architecture, which has included design at all scales and the implementation of various building types, he has always maintained the craft of draftsmanship in his work – once called by a mentor an “architect’s architect”.  This penchant for illustration in the design process translates into Jeff’s paintings where a perspective, a detail, a form, or shadow are drawn with presentational care.  That said, rather than realism, he strives to interpret his subject in exciting representational fashion through the painting medium itself - Modern Impressionism

He is inspired by the impressionist painters Paul Cezanne, Mary Cassatt, Monet, Renoir, post-impressionist Van Gogh, American artists Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper.  He has studied with noted, award winning contemporary impressionist and plein air painters, including Hiu Lai Chong, the late Randy Sexton, Colin Page, Bernie Dellario, Peggi Kroll Roberts, Ray Roberts and the late colorist Camille Przewodek.  These studies have most often been on location, painting en plein-air or at artist schools - venues on both coasts including The Scottsdale Artist School (Scottsdale, AZ), Plein-Air Liaison (Petaluma, CA), Chesapeake Fine Art Studio (Stevensville, MD),  Easton School (Easton, MD), or the Art League (Alexandria, VA).

• 2025 1st Place - Peninsula Annual Plein Air Competition in Peninsula, OH

  - juried by Craig Staufer , artist

  • "Train Kept a Rollin’”, 16 x 8 gouache on watercolor paper.

  • Peninsula Art Acadamy 2025 Annual Plein Air Competition - Peninsula, OH

• 2025 3rd Place - Peninsula Annual Plein Air Competition in Peninsula, OH

  - juried by Craig Staufer , artist

  • "Mill Street”, 16 x 12 gouache on watercolor paper.

  • Peninsula Art Acadamy 2025 Annual Plein Air Competition - Peninsula, OH

• 2025 Award of Excellence - Ohio Plein Air Society 22nd Annual Competition

  - juried by Ron Donoughe , artist

  • "Country Road”, 14 x 10 gouache on watercolor paper.

  • OPAS 2025 Annual Plein Air Competition - Millersburg, OH

• 2025 Bay Arts Plein Air Event

  - I participated as the juror for selecting the best works from the annual plein air

  competition

  • Bay Arts - Bay Village, OH

• 2025 Plein Air Montana - Juried Artist

  - I participated in the annual plein air festival and exhibition in Bozeman, Montana (and

  surrounding area) hosted by Bozeman Art Museum

  • Bozeman Art Museum - Bozeman, Montana

• 2024 3rd Place - Bay Arts Plein Air Event

  - juried by Tricia Kaman , artist

  • "Morning Shores”, 14 x 10 gouache on watercolor paper.

  • Bay Arts - Bay Village, OH

• 2021- 2024 Vining Gallery 2nd thru 5th Annual - Group Invitational Exhibition

  - honored to have shown my work with some of the best contemporary artists in the

  country, particulary in the plein air genre

  • Vining Gallery - Indianapolis, Indiana

• 2021 2nd Place - Ohio Plein Air Society 18th Annual Competition

  - juried by Patrick Lee, internationally recognized artist

  • "Sunshine on a Cloudy Day”, 12 x 9 gouache on watercolor paper

  • OPAS 2025 Annual Plein Air Competition - Columbus, OH

• 2020 Award of Excellence - Ohio Plein Air Society 17th Annual Competition

  - juried by Tricia Kaman , artist

  • "Edge Conditions”, 24 x 12 oil on canvas.

  • OPAS 2025 Annual Plein Air Competition - Columbus, OH

• 2020 American Impressionist Society, Online - Juried Exhibition

  - juried by Ned Mueller AISM , artist

  • "4:59", 12 x 9 gouache on watercolor paper.

  2020 Ohio Plein Air Society, Painting in the Elements - Juried Exhibition

  - juried by Lawrence Churski , artist

  • "UPROOTED", 9 x 12 gouache on watercolor paper

  • “LATE BLOOMER”, 9 x 12 gouache on watercolor paper

  • “SPRING BLOSSOMS” 16 x 12 gouache on watercolor paper

• 2020 Maryland Federation of Arts, Street Scenes - Juried Exhibition

  - juried by Adam Davies , artist

  • "THE ROAD HOME", 12 x 9 gouache on watercolor paper.

• 2019 Honorable Mention - 7th Annual Bath County Plein Air Festival

  - judged by Angela Cunningham, artist "WARM SPRINGS PRESBYTERIAN", 20 x 16

  gouache on aquabord.

• 2019 Bath County Plein Air Festival- 7th Annual Event - Juried Artist

• 2019 Plein Air Easton - 15th Annual Event - Juried Artist

• 2018 Artist Choice & Award of Excellence - 15th Annual OPAS Competition - judged by 50+ artist peers for Artist Choice & Michael Chesley Johnson, for award of excellence "HISTORIC FINDLAY MARKET", 14 x 11 gouache on illustration paper

• 2018 Finalist - August Art Muse Contest - judged by Carrie Roets-Waller

  "Here Comes the Sun", 18x 14 gouache on watercolor paper

• 2018 2nd Place - Piqua Art Festival, Piqua Ohio - judged by Dan Knepper "TWO HOUR PARKING", 11 x 14 gouache on illustration paper

• 2018 3rd Place - Tiffin, OH Plein Air Competition

  "HUGO’S ICE CREAM", 15 x 11 gouache on illustration paper 

• 2017 Rock The Lake - www.rockthelake.com interview with editor Laura Johnston

  http://www.rockthelake.com/tags/jeff-a-evans/

• 2017 3rd Place - 14th Annual OPAS Competition - judged by Dawn Whitelaw "BOATYARD MIKE", 8 x 13 gouache on illustration paper

• 2017 Best of OPAS Juried Exhibit at CMOA (Columbus Museum of Art) - juried by Dawn Whitelaw (3 paintings)

• 2014 3rd Place - Easels in Frederick Quick Draw Competition - judged by Anne Blair Brown "CHURCH STREET", 11 x 14 gouache on illustration paper

I have read somewhere that “art is not always about pretty things. Its about who we are, what happened to us, and how our lives are affected”.  Some of the great song writers, while in their twenties, have written generational anthems with lyrics that in retrospect might seemingly belie their experiences in life.  Words and accompaniment that are timeless and universal, evoking emotional responses from audiences that transcend a particular generation.  In perhaps a more subtle way, or just tapping into different senses, I believe we are drawn to inspired works in the visual arts that provoke our emotions and move us in similar fashion.

It is my aspiration in my work as an artist to set inhibitions aside, fueled by a creative passion, and to allow myself to be a medium for the story inside of me to be told through my art.  This is why I now call myself, unapologetically, an artist. I don’t always know the story until it unfolds.  I feel it though.  The inspiration comes in the doing. If even not about “pretty things”, and like a songwriter sometimes from a place of pain, my ambition is that the work itself will speak of hope. [..The wound is where the Light enters you. ~ Rumi].  My work has evolved, maintaining mystery, to provoke questions.  I wish to be inspired and to inspire others along the way. 

In my art, primarily representational paintings from life, I look for the colors in the shadows and the darkest places we visually record.  My training as an architect appears by way of draftsmanship and my point of view capturing the juxtaposition of people, the built environment, and the natural habitats where we reside.  As in design, I am forever interested in the process and curious to try new methods.  I am mindful not to just copy what i’m looking at but to consider its application in an art piece and the appropriate level of abstraction true to my own voice.  I try to capture the light of this moment in time, its effect on color, and the way it makes me feel. In most of my paintings the brush marks are intuitive, but are meant to be seen, and part of the story through the energy and impressions they leave behind.  

Thank you for sharing in on this journey.  Many of you have been a part of the story. This online gallery of my work reveals a commitment to hard work, opportunities of travel, chance meetings with strangers, lunchtime paintings in urban life, a journal of personal endeavors.  I am grateful, even for the hardships that are but a chapter and not the end.  The galleries of paintings represent an expression of the world around us and the story within me. I hope you might find in it some things that inspire you, and possibly add a piece to your collection, may it be a good song!