Artist Statement:
Jeff Darrow was raised on a dairy farm near Shullsburg, a community in southwest Wisconsin. His father saw to it that hard work was a preamble to breakfast (and all other meals) so he developed a farmer’s work ethic and a love for, among other things, dirt-floor machine sheds full of heavy rusted things and sun-baked landscapes. During the long, hot summer days in rural America, it was his sense that everything seemed to stand still and change came grudgingly slow. Although he tries to capture that same stillness in his work, he tackles the subject matter now with urgency, before it is reduced to scrap iron, parking lots or condos.