Nebraska-native Edgar Jerins, one of the leading artists in the
resurgence of realism in the art world is known mostly today for his haunting, dramatic
charcoal drawings of troubled family and friends. I caught up with Edgar recently to discuss
his time illustrating some of the classic album covers for Savatage and
Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Edgar Jerins: Both my mother & father and most of my relatives were from Latvia. My grandfather studied at the Riga Academy in Latvia as a theater backdrop painter. So he painted his whole life and my mother did artwork, so my brothers and I did artwork all the time. We had art books on Botticelli and Munch and Goya. It was really there from the beginning. I worked all the time, I did a lot of artwork, I gave stuff to friends. And then I got lucky; I had really good instructors in Junior High and in High School. Also, I began private instruction, my brother and I and our high school art teacher would take this private instruction on Monday nights, and so I was getting formal training at age 14. I did my first nude at 14.
Growing up in Nebraska was interesting, as I grew up within a European community really. The Latvians never had a neighborhood, but it was being around my mom and dad and our cousins; it was different than just growing up in Omaha. I love Nebraska; I love Omaha. I go back there and visit every year. Where the Midwest influence comes in are my drawings, my own work. Even when I am working in New York, they end up with a Midwest sensibility.
DR: I can see that, just looking at some of the
images on your website, the Midwest influence is certainly there.
EJ: And I want that, it’s not forced, not something
I try to do, it’s just there.
DR: As you graduated high school, did you go right
into furthering your education in art?
EJ: Yes. I only wanted to go to a figure-based art
school and I ended up going to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in
Philadelphia. It’s the oldest art school in America, and it was all figure-based,
so you’re painting and drawing mostly the nude and some portraiture, but mostly
working with the figure. The school I teach at now, I teach graduate level, it’s
the same underlying philosophy. The underlying philosophy of studying the
figure is that if you can paint and draw the human figure you can paint and
draw anything. It’s the most complicated thing on the planet. So, I went
straight to Philadelphia, did four years of art school, and went out into the
real world.
DR: Did you find yourself drawn to any particular
medium?
EJ: Primarily oil. I have always been an oil
painter. The work that I did for Savatage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra are all
oil, real traditional oil paintings.
DR: Growing up, was there any particular artist that
really inspired you?
EJ: I think everybody in High School likes Dali. I
liked every aspect of Dali, what I read, his personality, his outrageousness. Dali
is one of those artists you look at, then you don’t look at, and then you come
back and realize that they still hold up. I think that happens with all
artists, with whatever kind of art you have. There are certain artists you go
back in and revisit. I went back not too long ago and re-read Edgar Allen Poe -
everyone reads Poe in High School - and the work holds up. So I loved Dali, I
loved Botticelli; I was
really drawn to the darker side. One of my all-time favorite artists is Goya
with all his images of war, as well as his many beautiful portraits of women. And
of course, I liked Gauguin and van Gogh, and once I went to
art school, I was around all of these major museums and all of these fellow
artists, my tastes expanded as I got to know more artists.DR: Once you graduated, did you go right into commissioned portraits and illustrations?
EJ: Fine art has a mixed feeling about illustration.
There is this idea that work-for-hire diminishes the art, that the artist should
just be expressing their soul. I have always done commissioned portraits; I’ve
always worked with people, with the figure. I enjoy doing commissioned
portraits and I did them even in High School, so it goes all the way back. So
with me it’s always been a mix. Illustration was something I didn’t pursue; I did my first illustration much later,
when I was 30 years old. Even then, it was a mix; at that time I was doing
nudes, doing commissioned portraits and then some illustrations.
Illustrations, like everything else, have its pluses
and minuses. The plus is that you paint things that you would never paint, and
if your employers are good then you have the latitude to make really good work.
The negatives are when you are doing images that you’re not interested in. With
all of the album covers I did, none of that falls in to place for that. All of the stuff I did for Savatage and
TSO were all compelling and really cool.
DR: So how did you wind up getting together with
Paul O’Neill and Savatage?
EJ: Well, at the time I was a caretaker in a really
cool neighborhood, and all of a sudden (rock producer) Jack Douglas and
(Aerosmith guitarist) Rick Dufay moved in to the neighborhood. I got to know
them really well, with Jack, his wife Christine, and Rick coming over and
looking at my art. Well, Jack knew that Paul O’Neill was looking for someone to
do an album cover, so it was really through Jack that I met Paul. I wound up
meeting with Paul at a recording studio in New York.
The first album I did with them was Dead Winter Dead. Paul told me the image
he wanted with the gargoyle and the city of Sarajevo. Again, with illustration
you are kind of compositing something, so one thing you want when you are a
realist is a lot of reference. So when he gave me the assignment, I had a
friend who had all of these gargoyle statues, so I had that part covered. I
went down to The Strand in New York and got a great book on Sarajevo – it was
happening at that time - and got all of these images. I worked up a drawing of
a gargoyle with the city behind it. Then I would go meet with him, go back and
forth, and play with the image. Paul is very particular; he is a perfectionist and
it shows. When you see a concert, he is involved in every single flame. [laughs]
I’m also a perfectionist so it works for me. Paul would bounce ideas with other
people, but it really is him and his ideas. We put a lot of time in with the
drawings going back and forth before I committed to color and oil. So I worked
up the painting.
The one thing I did that was different from a lot of
illustrations was that I worked them up in oil on linen, using all the top
materials, and they were pretty big, about 24” x 36”. This was stretched on
linen like a real painting as opposed to a lot of illustrations that are done
on illustration board. I did them like I was doing a commissioned portrait of
the president, using the best materials and making sure they were archival. So
I did that painting, which Paul now owns and that album wound up going crazy well
when they pulled that one song off the album, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra was
built out of that, and that was the start with me with them.
DR: That Dead Winter
Dead cover really captures the devastation in the city.
EJ: Yeah, and if you look closely you
will see I put a lot of crosses and minarets in the background. I was looking
at reference at the time and minarets were all through-out the city. That was a
cool cover.
DR: Were you already a fan, or familiar with
Savatage’s music before you got to work with them?
EJ: You know what? I wasn’t. I didn’t know their
music. Of course I got to know it once I started working with them. I listened
to a lot of music, I like a lot of metal music, I have a real wide range, I
just didn’t know the band.
DR: Prior to you coming on board, the previous batch
of their covers were done by an artist out of Florida named Gary Smith. Were
you familiar with his work at all? Did you look at those covers for inspiration?
EJ: Only once I came on board, and then I went back and looked at his work. I didn’t try at all to emulate it though. I figured Paul hired me and I’m going to work with him but I’m going to work with my technical skills. If you look at Gary’s art, my art, and Greg’s art, there are three pretty distinct styles.
DR: How long did it typically take to create these covers?
EJ: The covers took, well some of them are more
complex, but they took about a month of full time work. So let’s say I have a
couple projects going at the same time, so it might be two months from start to
finish. So like a month of real hard full time work.
DR: Would Paul share his storyline or give you an
idea of what the story was about to give you an idea of where he was coming
from?
EJ: Yeah. Well, what he would do is he would give me
the theme of his write-ups. He wouldn’t give me every song or all the lyrics,
but he would give me enough. We worked real carefully on the feeling and the
themes. For example on Beethoven’s Last
Night I read this long 3-4 pages – whatever he wrote about it. So yeah, he
would tell me the underlying themes.
DR: Did you get to hear the music as it was being
created?
EJ: Yes. I would meet with Paul quite a bit. Again,
start with concept on each one, then I work up drawings, then he would put in
ideas, or maybe like “maybe this could be smaller or bigger”. A lot of times I
had worked up a whole bunch of Xeroxes of drawings, say like the size of the
clock in Beethoven’s Last Night so we
would have different sizes where we could sit, cut, and paste, like shift and
move some parts. [laughs] I know everyone probably does it now on the computer,
but I don’t. I would do it my own way, so I would be sitting and working with
him but I would be listening to them recording. He would give me what he could
and I would play the music while I was working.
DR: Out of the seven covers you did for
Savatage/TSO, do you have any one or two that standout as a favorite?
EJ: When I have talked to my students about
illustration, one of the coolest covers is Wake
of Magellan, for me. It was kind of everything I liked about illustration
in that I was doing something that I would never normally do. So it’s real
challenging…a ghost ship with flames behind it [laughs] on these rocky seas and
a Spanish galleon, and a very specific ship. I don’t know if you know, but we
put the gargoyle on the ship…it’s the masthead.
DR: I see that there now….I never noticed that
before.
EJ: There are a lot of really small things like that
that are in the work too. So the gargoyle worked its way in there. There’s
something really special about that cover. I work with artists a lot in terms
of critiques, and my friend Steve, who is an illustrator, he had a friend come
over from England. This friend had done all this work for George Lucas, like
these books illustrating all the Star Wars war machines, and he really knew
perspective. When I was doing the painting, they came over and I had him look
at it. I had painted the galleon, and at that point it was a little thin. He told
me how the Galleons were built like tanks, really wide and massive. It wound up
being a really fun night as he was helping me work out the perspective of each
of those masts in it. The angles had to be perfect and it had to have the
weight of the ship, and I didn’t have that yet. It’s just a fun, cool image.
And then, I have to say this that I did like all of
them, but I also love Beethoven’s Last
Night. Part of that is that it’s an artist who is there and struggling, and
one candle almost burnt out and one still lit, it has all of this symbolic
stuff, all the papers thrown on the floor, just the struggle for creativity and
the struggles he is going through in the album. That one again I went out and
got all of these books on Beethoven. And you know Beethoven was painted and
drawn a lot so it wasn’t like a figure from the distant past. They had
photographs of the room where he died in Vienna, so out the window in the cover
- that’s Vienna. The piano is very, very specific. It had to be that exact
piano, how pianos looked then. Paul made some adjustments on the room, making
it a little more fanciful because the room was a little more stripped down, a
little more linear, but I got a lot of reference on that one.
DR: That really is an iconic cover and I have heard
from many TSO fans who really appreciate the detail and how it really shows the
anguish in Beethoven.
EJ: One of the things with that cover is that it is
really two colors; it’s blue and orange in effect. And I wanted it almost like
good and bad, light and dark, life and death. If you look at it, its broken
into two – it’s warm and cool, the two opposites. I wanted that emotion in
there through the color. If you start breaking it down you’ll see there’s light
and life in the warmth of the room, and then outside there’s lightning, death
and darkness in a way. I worked hard on all of these, but I worked really hard
on that one.
DR: Three of the covers: Christmas Eve & Other Stories, Christmas Attic, and Christmas
Trilogy, feature a child. Did you have a particular child in mind when
painting these?
EJ: On the first one, I used a friend of mine’s son.
His name is Tyler Meester. At the time, I had a lot of friends who had young
children that I was painting. It is kind of the same boy I used for the final
cover, for the Trilogy. I pulled back
that reference.DR: Obviously he is older now, is he aware that he is the model for those two covers?
EJ: Oh yeah. His dad, Tim, is a good friend of mine.
I painted his kids and we have known each other for years. I had him pose Tyler
in an adult white t-shirt, which turned into kind of a nightgown. He was the
angel for the first one.
EJ: It’s Manhattan, but we moved things around [laughs]. If you look there are specific buildings but they are in the wrong place. Again that all comes down to Paul, and I’m playing and playing and I found all of these images and getting the perspective of looking down on the park and looking out over the city. When you see the real piece, it’s very luminous; it really glows. It’s a pretty cool painting.
DR: Did you ever consider that your imagery may influence the way in which the listener approached the music? Obviously there is the story and the lyrics and the music, but the cover can really set a mood right off the bat.
EJ: Oh completely. I remember when I was younger and you pick up a book like
Swiss Family Robinson, and you look at that cover every time you open the book.
So sure, that’s a big part of it. You have that responsibility and ultimately
you really do the best job possible. And you’re working with direction so like
when working with the ghost ship, the sails had to go a certain way. I think I
had drawn them the other way – if you look they are blowing like the ship is drifting,
and I had drawn them like the ship was being pulled by them.
DR: You mentioned earlier how you did the original artwork as 2’x3’ pieces, and
obviously, that was going to be shrunk down to the 12” square LP size, and
later to the size of the CD cover. How do you feel about pieces of work meant
to be viewed in 12" x 12" being shrunk to CD size?
EJ: Well, that was
sort of accepted. I think that’s where Paul made the posters and other things
as he and I grew up with albums. Obviously as you know, most people today
haven’t grown up with vinyl. Now you don’t even have album covers, it’s digital
you just go to Apple and get the image. I’m sure you and me and Paul and all
the Savatage guys…we were lucky to have LPs because there was a real magic to
having an album cover that was that big and you pull out the sleeve and you
have all the words and you have the back of the cover; we were just lucky to
have it. People have it a little now; it’s a niche market.
DR: It sure is. I know TSO have released some of their recent work on vinyl...
EJ: I have some of them on vinyl. They have always done them, Poets & Madmen on vinyl...
DR: I have seen a real nice picture disc of Poets & Madmen where your artwork is printed directly on the vinyl.
EJ: Yes. That's the one I have! It's funny; the colors on the album are a little better than on the front cover [laughs]. That was a fun image too, doing an insane asylum. That's where illustration is at it's best, where you are given these challenges and you're doing these images that you never thought you would do.
EJ: I have some of them on vinyl. They have always done them, Poets & Madmen on vinyl...
DR: I have seen a real nice picture disc of Poets & Madmen where your artwork is printed directly on the vinyl.
EJ: Yes. That's the one I have! It's funny; the colors on the album are a little better than on the front cover [laughs]. That was a fun image too, doing an insane asylum. That's where illustration is at it's best, where you are given these challenges and you're doing these images that you never thought you would do.
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| Photo courtesy: Dan Linich |
DR: Were you involved with the tour shirts and other
merchandise that had your artwork on them?
EJ: No. Paul knows the business. He and I would meet
about the image and bounce ideas off of each other, but everything after that I
wasn’t involved with. To be frank, I have these different things going on, but
my primary drive is my own personal art. I never pursued being an illustrator
though I had an agent for a while, but all I’ve done my entire life is pursue
being a fine artist; galleries, having shows, getting my work into museums. So
this was something along the way, and it was great and I enjoyed it. When Paul
went to another artist, there were no hard feelings.
DR: I was going to ask about that.
EJ: I’m not an illustrator. He needed someone who
could create a lot more images in a shorter time. The way I work, I’m not a
slow artist, but you can see the detail. He needed someone who could work in
broader areas and work faster, like do those books. Those books would have
taken me forever. I could have tried to simplify my style, but the tour programs
and all of those things, you can’t spend a month on every page of a tour
program, and I probably would have [laughs]. So when he switched over, I was
involved in so many other things there were completely no hard feelings. Even
this past fall I took my two daughters to a TSO show at the Prudential Center
in Newark and we went backstage and talked with Bob Kinkel and all the guys.
DR: I still see your name in the “Thank yous” in the
last couple albums.
EJ: Oh Really? Man, that’s cool!
DR: You did covers for Savatage and Trans-Siberian
Orchestra. Have you been approached or have you thought about doing other album
cover artwork?
EJ: I would do it in a second. With my work and my
artwork and my career, I have kind of followed things that have happened. So at
that time, working with Paul and Savatage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, it was
steady work, you know? Plus my other stuff. Then there are other periods where I
am doing more portraits and other periods where my nudes are selling. Then I
switched to those drawings in 2001 and I have done really well with them in
terms of my career. Three years ago, I started teaching at New York Academy of
Art. They wanted me to teach, at the graduate level, large narrative drawings. I
really love teaching. I like to have a mix. If someone approached me to do an
album cover, I would do it in a second. I love rock n roll. The tough thing,
when it comes to imagery is that the only people that really use paintings are
metal bands. Almost every other album cover is a photo. There are very few
bands that use artwork now. You know what I mean? So many use photos of the
band. But I really enjoyed my time with that. I also have a platinum and gold
album on my wall, and that is something that I never thought I would have in my
life!
DR: You mentioned earlier about Paul switching over
to working with Greg Hildebrandt. Are you familiar with his work?
EJ: The album that was the switchover album was the
one with the hand reaching in to the window…
DR: The Lost
Christmas Eve.
EJ: Right. Paul had talked about the image, and I’m
not sure if I had even worked up preliminary drawings, I know I had the image
kind of in my head, and then he went with him. Again, no big thing. I think everyone
was nervous, and I was like “I’m not an illustrator guys” [laughs]. I was glad
to have been part of the ride. He is the right guy for them now, obviously. Paul
is such a perfectionist; he is going to get what he needs. He needed me for a
while; he got me. He’s working with Greg, and Greg delivers what he needs and that
is what matters.
DR: You are well known today for your charcoal
drawings. When did you start working with those?
EJ: I started those in 2001. That’s where I am known
now in the art world, and I do a fair amount of visiting-artist things where
colleges will pull me in and I will do lecture critiques and students will sign
up and I will go and critique their work.
DR: Do you prefer working with charcoal versus oil?
EJ: I think what I like is just to have a balance. The
bulk of the work I do now is charcoal, but I will still get a commissioned oil
here and there, or I will just do an oil. And I work in pastel too. I will just
do an oil painting of my daughter just because I like to paint too. And because
the subject matter of the charcoal drawings is so heavy that I want to do stuff
that is not so dark.
DR: I find the charcoal drawings are very haunting,
very emotional.
EJ: Yeah. They are real people facing real
adversity. When I do the lecture I talk about how each drawing came about, then
I talk about each narrative and the people in the drawings. Those people are
all friends or family facing difficulties, from the death of their parents to
alcoholism to a real wide range of things. Those drawings really broke me out
and put me into the art world, and when I lecture and teach it’s because of the
drawings. I talk about my career too, so I do talk about illustration,
commissioned portraits and landscapes. There was a period of time where I did a
tremendous amount of landscapes; they’re pastel so they’re fast but I’d be on
location with my French easel and working on landscapes. I like it all. It
changes and shifts, but I had this amazing run with Savatage and TSO and it was
great!
DR: If someone asked you “How do I become the next
“Edgar Jerins” what would you tell them? Has anyone asked you that before?
EJ: Well, I think when you teach, especially if you
teach an elective, in some ways they are asking you that. I haven’t had that
asked directly, but I have had people ask about the subject matter. Just recently,
when lecturing at Laguna College of Art & Design, someone asked, “How would
I find subject matter?” I responded, “Just be honest and true to yourself and
draw and paint what’s important to you.” My advice to anyone who wants to be a
fine artist or wants to be an illustrator is work harder than anyone you know. It
is hard work. I worked really hard my entire life. That’s a big part of it, just
work. Learn how to paint, learn how to draw glass, learn how to do a landscape,
learn how to do clouds.
The second part is follow your passions. Don’t try
and make art, draw what you are passionate about, draw what is important to
you. The third part is the social side. I like people, I like being around
people. I like doing portraits. I worked really well with Paul and I liked
being around all the guys and watching them make music and create this art. That’s
a component that is less tangible; basically be a good person and be nice to
people.
And that goes for everything. People understand the
Olympics. These athletes train since they were a kid. When it comes to art, you
have to work just as hard as someone training for the Olympics, if you want to
succeed. Same with guitar, there’s this concept that you can get a guitar, sit
with your friends, and play a little bit. Doesn’t work that way. You know what
I mean?
DR: Absolutely. My daughter has been studying the
violin since she was 4 years old so I am well aware of the work that goes in.
EJ: That would be my big thing. I had the work
ethic. Maybe it was a Latvian kind of thing, I don’t know. My mom was really
into us studying and working hard, so I have a strong work ethic. You won’t
succeed in anything you do without that.
DR: That’s great advice.
EJ: Art is not some magical thing, as you know with
your daughter, that you can pick it up and get lucky. And it’s the social thing
too. I happen to get along with people. I met Jack Douglas, and he opened that
door, I walked through and I was there for a while and it was great.
DR: Is there anything that you are working on
currently that you can talk about? Any exhibitions coming up?
EJ: Well currently, I teach at the M.F.A. level at
the New York Academy of Art. I am going to be teaching Continuing Education
there. I will have one class. It is real flexible. I will have a figure, a
nude. Anyone can come in; it is a 12-week course. It’s going to be a drawing
course, but if they want to work on something else like big drawings, they can
do that. But they can study with me.
DR: Very nice! What a great opportunity!
EJ: Yeah, and it is for the general public. The
school has two sides: they have the M.F.A. program and they have Continuing
Education, so this is new. It is in Tribeca so it’s a way for people that want
to study with me, they can do it.
DR: Thank you so much for taking the time, this was
really interesting and fun.
EJ: You’re very welcome.
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| Photo by Ruby Jerins |
For More
information:
Edgar Jerins’s official site: http://www.jerins.com
Edgar Jerins’s official site: http://www.jerins.com
New
York Academy of Art: http://nyaa.edu
Savatage:
http://www.savatage.com
Trans-Siberian
Orchestra: http://www.trans-siberian.com
TSO Fan Site/Message Board: http://tsoboards.com
