Storm Clouds: Jeff Soto (Hardcover)

Product Description

For Storm Clouds, Jeff Soto explores his predominant fears and anxieties over his daughter’s future, the civil war in Iraq, and the United States policies on environmental conservation.

Soto’s concern for the American population’s indifference and a general disconnection to global affairs are motivating factors behind his overtly mature subject matter. Storm Clouds is ripe with metaphors that allude to the fate of the planet should neglect and indifference prevail. Soto’s expressive narratives evoke inherent contradictions, crossing between notions of a precarious and fragile natural world on the brink of extinction with one that is an indestructible, organic mass.

Executed with a sophisticated mélange of graffiti and mixed media techniques, Jeff Soto’s paintings permeate with influences of popular culture, science fiction, and memories of nuclear war. Illustrating these notions, Soto creates a futuristic world where ominous clouds dominate, exotic plants struggle to survive, and colored prisms symbolize hope amidst desolate landscapes. Soto’s creatures, floating gardens, and religious symbols exist in entangled masses, revealing a civilisation’s decline, destruction, and efforts to regenerate. In this surreal universe, an inevitable ice age has befallen, humans are extinct and fantastic robotic creatures flourish. Swarms of oil-like cloud formations expand on themes of death and decay, while subtle and bold use of text emphasises the artist’s most intense trepidation’s and desires.