The Mourners Painting

Jim Velgot's drawings offer an insightful, humorous vision of contemporary life. His themes range from the nature of good and evil to human intimacy and man's private reality versus his public persona.   His technique is marked by discordant images, emphasized with gesture and movement with minimal lines. He begins each drawing in blue as a gesture and then finishes the drawing in black. Jim's work is spontaneous and his tone is a unique blend of the reflective and whimsical.   "I am always trying to stay within the moment. I am in constant search for the message and drawing to appear simultaneously. To me they are one."   Jim was born in Connecticut in 1961. His father was a graphic art supervisor and his mother, a typesetter for a daily newspaper. With roots in the graphics industry, Jim quickly found a love for printmaking and illustration. Educated at Pratt Institute in New York City, he came to identify with the works of George Grosz, Paul Klee and Marc Chagall.   Jim has created thousands of drawings over the years some of which have appeared in gallery showings as well as The New York Times, The NYT Book Review, and the NYT Op-Ed section, as well as The New York Sun.