Jay Ressler • Artist

Jay Ressler • Artist

Artistic Images and Sometimes Commentary

  • Red Barn Oley Vallery
  • December Rain
  • Misty Taste of Moonshine
Berks County Composite Photography Oley Valley 

No. 36. The Misty Taste of Moonshine, etc.

Jay M. Ressler 0 Comments , , , ,

Red Barn, Purple Sky has been shown a number of times during the past year. I’ve displayed it prominently in my booths at art fairs in recent weeks. One customer asked whether I had others of a similar nature. I went back in my files and found a couple to start with. I feel a whole new series beginning. I’ll be displaying these three together at Saylor House Home Furnishings and Decor for the next few months starting Monday, September 25. (The title of the featured piece “The Misty Taste of Moonshine” is from a line in John Denver’s song Take Me Home, Country Road.)

Jay M. Ressler

Jay Ressler Composite Photography, Encaustic Art, and Oil Painting He is an outstanding location photographer and painter, with an eye that can capture the soul of a Havana back street as beautifully as the sip of a hungry hummingbird, often with compelling black and white images. Jay Ressler is best known for artistic expression that lives in layers between opposites. “I like to explore boundaries,” he explains. “Boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, between reality and imagination, between certainty and skepticism.” He does this by compositing his own photography in multiple layers to produce stunningly original, interleaved images. Using Photoshop, other image manipulation software and a variety of digital effects, he paints one photographic layer on top of another. He takes advantage of textures he's captured along with an array of processes for manipulating light, contrast, and color to tell the story. “Distorting and reinterpreting the literal 'machine moments' captured by the camera is as old as the art of photography,” he insists. Jay occasionally extends his multi-layered approach to encaustic mixed media creations. Based on ancient techniques, the process begins with cooking his own recipes of beeswax and damar resin and applying this medium between the layers of photographic images, along with various pigmented compounds and materials to add color, texture and expression. Either way, the results are riveting. The viewer is drawn into an unfolding, dreamlike scene that might be heart-warming, haunting, gritty, poignant or magical. Sometimes, within the various layers, all of the above. The award-winning photographer/artist has many dimensions himself. He studied advanced digital photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and advanced encaustic techniques with leading instructors in the field. He worked as an underground coal miner, steelworker, machinist, labor and civil rights activist, copywriter and commercial printer. He has a BS in Psychology from Albright College.

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