Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Originality, serendipity, humor and surprise infuse the art of Jerry Garcia. Although his visual inventions span a wide range of themes, they are basically depictions of fleeting thoughts and images arising from nowhere in particular. Jerry addressed subject matter as it arose in his mind or out of his pen, never planning or making corrections, but working automatically, for the pleasure of line and color and forms emerging in front of him at that moment. For current availability and prices please contact the gallery by email or at 510/282-8989. This page does not represent our entire inventory.
Jerry’s Visual Art
Jerry told me that his earliest aspiration was to be an artist. He kept sketchbooks and pens, pencils and watercolors with him at home and on tour. He had an instinct for the symbolic power of simple images. From birds and trees to skeletons and bees, his art is a thread of observation and invention that reveals the inner workings of his mind. One should be clear about one thing–all of Jerry’s work is serendipitous and immediate. He didn’t make sketches for paintings, and he didn’t do time-consuming techniques like rendering. In his drawings and paintings he pretty much let the chips fall where they might. He did go over pieces to intensify colors and to bring out hidden imagery, but there are few corrected strokes and no erasures. Jerry had no patience for perfection. He was discovering, not restating a thought or an impression. Art for him is play.
Although the paintings from his teen years show efforts to master traditional techniques, he ignored rules and restrictions even then, so that one sees in his early drawings and paintings not only the effect of the Impressionist trend of the fifties, but also flat treatments of city landscape and variously inspired flights, including a few Picassoid moments and a series of Matisse-like nudes. He was trying out popular styles of the time.
What meanings lay in those subjects for the artist? Jerry was a kaleidoscope of interests. He read constantly, books ranging from the thrillers of Dean Koontz to The Urantia Book, to Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee.” Jerry is possibly the most recorded musician ever; a lyricist, guitarist, vocalist, and an impressively productive visual artist. The fact that he was already enormously famous freed him from concerns about acceptance of his work, and, as his musical style derives from the homely heartstrings of Bluegrass, so Jerry’s drawings have their origins in Ignatz, Krazy Kat, and Disney, because Jerry’s first contact with art, like my own, came from the comics, movies and TV. We found we had both seen Bill and Coo, and loved Out of the Ink Bottle by Max Fleischer.
When Jerry began going to painting classes at The Art Institute he was only a boy of fifteen. He would have gone on to make a career of art in one way or another, had it not been for the Warlocks. Although he was not attending school regularly or pursuing a degree Jerry already thought of himself as an artist. In the fifties, the ideal of being an artist offered the luxury of pursuing one’s personal vision to the highest level. The image of the artist was as an intuitive philosopher and interpreter of the times; a seer. The audience were there, not only as witnesses, but as participants in his explorations. This generous spirit was also the compelling gift of Jerry’s music; the reason so many have shared intimate infinite time with Jerry Garcia.
–Roberta Weir. (Foreword Jerry Garcia: Paintings, Drawings & Sketches, pub. Celestial Arts, Berkeley 2004. Copyright Roberta Weir 2004. All rights reserved.)