From 1984 to 1988 Jeff attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, from which he received a Bachelors degree in Fine Art. It was there that he had his first formal art training and developed the techniques and tastes that would later shape his artistic aesthetics. After graduation, he stayed in New York City and worked as an illustrator and studio sculptor. Three years later, unsatisfied with the direction of his career and stifled by the limitations of commercial artwork, Jeff returned to Southampton to pursue his own artistic development. It was through his own analysis of art history and what it taught him that Jeff began the evolution toward what his work constitutes today.

“Since the most primitive man and beyond, we have had a deep spiritual association with nature. In art history individual projections of an idea of nature have been transformed into a pictorial myth striking notes that echo throughout the human psyche. We see this quite evidently when we review the changing perceptions of landscape over time. Landscape art is a point of view and an attitude produced by taste before it is a representation of a given scene. Given this, it can be said that through the intellectual processes of choice and imagination, the landscape artist uses painting as a vehicle for ideas, philosophies and emotions. One such contemporary artist is Jeff Muhs.”