Jeff Hughart began drawing when he was very young when his father, who went to an art college, took him and his siblings to crafts store near their home in Oxnard, California. That was the extent of his father’s active interest in his children’s artwork, but Hughart says that seeing his father’s work around the house when he was growing up encouraged him to develop and enhance his own artistic talents. Self-taught, or as he describes himself, an “outsider artist,” Hughart experimented in numerous art media before settling into life as a painter. He was a photographer, a videographer, a bass guitarist in a punk band, and a web designer. He continues to express himself through some of these media, particularly web design, but Hughart is primarily an abstract painter.

Hughart began painting seriously in 2002 when his girlfriend, an artist, encouraged him. Influenced by luminary abstract artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly, Picasso, and Dubuffet, as well as ancient cave paintings and primitive and tribal art, it is the raw edginess in his paintings that make his work unique. He explains that this style is a result of painting “with a lot of feelings and emotions.” Even his artistic process is abstract and expressive: while occasionally he will visualize his goal before he begins painting, the resulting paintings are often very different from the original idea. Often, he begins the process by looking at a photo and letting his imagination explore its limits. Whatever the process, his colorful, primitive work is unlike any other.

Occasionally compared to cave paintings or children’s art, Hughart’s creations express and inspire visceral reactions and bold, unfiltered emotion. As he explains, “I really think it is reliving my childhood and just being a kid again.” Of course, not everyone understands or appreciates his art. “At one gallery event I overheard a lady (pointing to one of my paintings) say her kid could paint better than that. I thought to myself ‘I hope they can,’ and I really don’t mean that in a vindictive way. People have different tastes and their own understanding about what is and what isn’t art and that’s fine. … When I’m done painting I hope it shows in the finished work and evokes some feeling in the viewer no matter what.” It is this free attitude and the force and energy behind it that allow him to create the unique and powerful paintings that have attracted the attention of collector across the United States. Hughart had sold his paintings to all sorts of people, including musicians, doctors, editors, teachers, and athletes, in addition to creating commissioned work.