Jeff Whetstone Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1968 -

Jeff Whetstone b. 1968

To start their creative engines, some artists go to their studios. Jeff Whetstone goes into the woods. There, among the dense forest of central North Carolina, the artist uses photography and video to explore the connections between man, nature, and masculinity. You see these themes emerge in his video Drawing E.Obsoleta, which shows Whetstone wrangling a black rat snake (or E. obsoleta, its Latin name) in an attempt to use the snake’s body to draw the landscape in which it lives.

The artist’s hand, blackened with charcoal, uses a rod to struggle with the creature,which slithers and writhes in response to his prods. At times, the line of the snake resembles a lilting horizon against the stark white backdrop of the plastic container. At others, the snake refuses to represent anything but itself and its tussle with the artist. Both a mighty struggle with a serpent and a humble attempt to make a drawing, Whetstone’s video explores the timeless theme of man striving to overcome the inevitable pull of nature—both without and within.

I came to art through the study of biology, so I’m constantly looking at men as animals and landscapes as ecological systems. A lot of my work is about territory. It’s about dominance. It’s about categorization. — Jeff Whetstone