Jeff’s art education began at a young age in his grandmother’s library. A painter and interior decorator, Carolyn’s library was filled with Russian academic art, impressionists, post impressionists, expressionists, cubists, and abstractionists. 

In 1968, Jeff traveled to San Francisco on a family vacation and visited his uncle Jim’s art gallery, Dilexi, known for its avant-guard contemporary art movement focus.  Jim Newman introduced his nephew to several of the artists the gallery represented. “I thought I had met the coolest people on the planet and was immediately captivated by everything and everybody there,” Jeff said.

During the next couple of years, Jeff doodled op-art and created abstract and surreal dioramas out of anything he could lay his hands on, even items found in the trash. He eventually earned his BA in Biology from Creighton University and worked towards an MS in Bio-Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska before leaving school.

Science is fundamental to Newman’s artistic processes.
“Science and art are evolutionary creative cousins. Ask a child and an adult what the last common ancestor of a dog and a human looked like, and many if not most adults will probably deny evolution and science. Children will simply draw a picture of what they imagine one would look like. I know who I’d rather spend time with,” Jeff said.

Most recently, since 2008, Jeff has been creating art full-time while living in Colorado, New York City, and now California. His work has been shown in NYC galleries and pop-up art shows in SOHO, the East Village, the Bowery and Chelsea, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles.  He applies technical skill sets acquired through invention, practice and study to form an artistic philosophy that combines intellectual exploration with emotional interpretation.

Jeff works across the spectrum between representation and abstraction. “I rely a lot on intuition and emotion to guide technical decisions while painting, most recently, surrealistic narratives.” 

Jeff has studied academic drawing and painting under Iliya Mirochnik, Slava Korolenkov, and at the Bridgeview School of Fine Arts in Queens, NY.