Bio of Jay Rolfe
My Story
I grew up in a small sleepy town outside of Philadelphia and became a lawyer because people told me I couldn’t make a living as an artist. But I was always looking for a way to express my passion. I traveled the world and visited over 200 museums looking for inspiration to help me develop a unique artistic idea.
Meanwhile I had acquired major carpentry skills renovating an 1860’s house in the Adirondack Mountains of New York with my wife in a kind of homesteading experiment. I tried my had at script writing and novels but I found my personal passion when I discovered the works of Piet Mondrian, paintings featured bright primary colors, and Ellsworth Kelly, whose paintings broke out of the rectangular mold and also often used bold bright colors.
So I began creating complex wood structures in 3 dimensions, representing important and widely recognized cultural symbols, like hearts, peace signs, Adam and Eve, stiletto heels, sports cars, and more. These wood frameworks often take many hours to conceptualize and even longer to construct, employing as many as 67 specially cut pieces of wood, 140 saw cuts including 53 curves and angles other than right angles, 236 pilot holes for 236 screws, and 12 bolts and nuts and 24 washers to assemble the various parts into the completed shape. I use a variety of tools to create this framework so it is not only strong, but lightweight. Then I evolved techniques to stretch artist’s canvas over these unusually shaped internal frameworks. Then I choose carefully the right colors, shades, and textures to enhance the meaning of the symbol and engage and excite the viewer.
The work can be tedious and frustrating, but the end result gives me the creative satisfaction I have craved all my life.
Passion
Jay Rolfe's artistic vision explores passion. He creates paintings about passion, things he or others feel passion about. And he creates them in the shape of the subject, in 3-D, and in large sizes.
Some of the things Rolfe noticed people feel passion for are: Love and Sex, Money, High Heel Shoes, Exotic Sports Cars, Hope and Peace, and the Mystery and Power of the Universe. These are Rolfe's major subjects.
Rolfe's works show beauty, vision, and hope for the 21st Century that uplift the spirit and nourish the soul. Using color, shape, 3-D, and huge size, Jay Rolfe shows the essence, beauty, and passion.
Like artists Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Matisse who gave up law to pursue art, Jay Rolfe gave up law to pursue art. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Rolfe as a “late-blooming artist [who] went outside the box.” That's quite a compliment! And metaphorically, it's where he likes to be.
And like artists Paul Gauguin, Maurice Utrillo, Henri Rousseau, and Horace Pippin, Jay Rolfe is self-taught. These self-taught artists didn't go to art school and didn't have prestigious apprenticeships. They all produced paintings that were quite creative, distinctive, and fresh. They all painted "outside the box," just as Rolfe does.
Before sacking law for art, Jay Rolfe searched for years for his signature style. When his signature style came to him several years ago, Jay Rolfe knew he had found what he really wanted to do, his passion. Jay Rolfe finally traded what was for him the boredom of law for the bliss of art and became a full time artist!
Freedom
Freedom and creativity have always been important values to Jay Rolfe. Art allows Jay Rolfe to use his melancholic artistic temperament to pursue both freedom and creativity with passion.
Jay Rolfe loved drawing and painting when he was a child. His love of art showed at university when, with a full academic load for credit, he added art history to his studies without receiving credit. Jay Rolfe’s higher education includes a short stint studying engineering at the University of Delaware, a business degree from the Wharton School, a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a graduate law degree from Temple University Law School.
Jay Rolfe was raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He married his college sweetheart, and they are still married. They have two children. Rolfe again lives in West Chester PA.
Several times in his business career, Jay Rolfe considered giving up law to pursue visual art. Rolfe created and collected visual art all the years he worked as a lawyer. He also wrote a published book and several screenplays and other books.
When Jay Rolfe had a dream of his signature style in November 2003, he felt he finally knew what he wanted to do when he grew up! Like legendary artists Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Pierre Bonnard, and Paul Cezanne, Jay Rolfe gave up law to pursue art. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Rolfe as a “late-blooming artist [who] went outside the box.”Rolfe is interested in art, architecture, nature, living naturally, engineering, recycling, and construction techniques. Jay Rolfe loves to experience art in everyday life through great design. The shapes and lines of architecture, sports cars, and useful items around the home are especially interesting to him.
Jay Rolfe’s art education was just like that of famous artists Paul Gauguin, Maurice Utrillo, Henri Rousseau, and Horace Pippin, he is self-taught. They didn't go to art school and didn't have prestigious apprenticeships. These self-taught artists each produced paintings that were quite creative, distinctive, and fresh, or “outside the box.” People often ask Rolfe where he gets his ideas. They come from his experience, the school of life.
For Rolfe, the beauty of a subject shines through its essence or truth. Jay Rolfe explores the essence and beauty, and seeks to transcend such contemporary issues as the nature of existence, disorientation, alienation, loneliness, unrequited love, complex relationships, conflict, unrest, war, greed, unfulfilled dreams, yearning, and boredom.
Rolfe says, “I love seeing people respond so deeply to my paintings, sometimes laughing, sometimes tearing up, sometimes transfixed.”
Artist Jay Rolfe offers hope and vision for the 21st Century. With his large, innovative Pop Art 3-D paintings on shaped stretched canvas, he transcends the pain, disorientation, depression and despair that many feel in contemporary life. The familiar images in Rolfe’s paintings, and the shape, depth, vibrant colors, and huge size of the paintings he creates, can impact the viewer and help him or her move beyond painful and depressing feelings. Beauty, humor, whimsy, and optimism suffuse Rolfe’s paintings.
Rolfe’s signature style of painting, huge Pop Art 3-D paintings on shaped stretched canvas, came to him in a dream. From that inspiration he applied diverse skills and resources from his previous experience to manifest his vision. His dramatic 3-D paintings attest to his carpentry skills, analytical mind, structural and spatial awareness, color sensitivity, and the love in his heart.
Jay Rolfe learned his carpentry skills on the job by buying a very rundown 140 year old farmhouse in the country without central heating. The widow who owned it left it vacant and unheated in the winter. She couldn’t climb the stairs to the second floor where she hadn’t been for over 20 years and where the ceiling was falling down. Jay Rolfe and his wife gutted the house down to the floor joists and rafters, and rebuilt it, replacing the roof, adding four dormers, a garage, a workshop, and four chimneys in the process.
Jay Rolfe enjoys walking in nature every day all year long. He also enjoys the experience and inspiration of beautiful places he encounters both near home and in his travels. His photographs capture nature's beauty.
Photos of Jay Rolfe At Work
Scroll down to see different phases of creating 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings.
Artist Jay Rolfe cutting canvas for his 3-D painting "Red Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder" (6 feet long version).
The artist stretching canvas over a stretcher framework for his 3DSSC painting "Red Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder."
Artist Jay Rolfe stapling canvas to a stretcher framework for his 3DSSC painting "Red Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder."
The artist painting "Red Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder" 3-D painting.
Artist Jay Rolfe assembling "Lightning Bolt" 3-D painting.
Artist Jay Rolfe with his 3-D painting "Black Hole" and his sculpture "Duchamp At The Middle East Peace Table."