circa 2019
Iowa-born artist Jeff Aeling brings striking, enveloping Photorealism to his landscape paintings of the American Southwest. If there is enough distance between a viewer and one of Aeling’s works that the delicate brush strokes are rendered nearly invisible, the act of determining whether it’s a painting or a photograph becomes an arduous task.
Aeling begins his work by taking photographs of his subject. He maintains that the work loses something when painting outdoors, and the lens of photography better captures one’s perception and memory of the experience. The artist conveys the feelings of freedom that a big-sky horizon might afford or the intimacy that a forest glade can provide. He captures the heaviness and chaos of a thunderstorm as masterfully as he depicts the tranquility of an island sunset, and for his realist style and focus on nature, he has drawn comparisons to the Barbizon and Hudson River schools, respectively.
Aeling was born in Iowa City. His father was an army doctor, so Jeff moved around a lot as a child. While his family lived in Hawaii for one of his father's postings, Aeling developed an appreciation and connection to nature.
Though he’d been painting for years by then, he found representation at the Medicine Man Gallery of Tucson, Arizona, in the mid-1990s. Aeling now lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri, where he continues to capture the essence of nature in its purest form.
Find original Jeff Aeling landscape paintings other paintings on 1stDibs.
Afternoon Trees 220805, Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Don Bishop
Located in Yardley, PA
Afternoon Trees 220805 is a contemporary tonal landscape painting with nice light and atmosphere. This painting is part of my Tonal Landscapes...
Oil
Afternoon Trees 241125, Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Don Bishop
Located in Yardley, PA
Afternoon Trees 241125 is a contemporary tonal landscape painting with nice light and atmosphere. This painting is part of my Tonal Landscapes series which are landscapes with a focu...
Oil
$416
H 20.67 in W 26.58 in
Mary Chugg (1935-2024) - Framed Contemporary Oil, Sunlight & Trees
Located in Corsham, GB
Oil on canvas board. Signed to the lower left. Well presented in a contemporary wooden frame.
Oil
$1,646Sale Price|20% Off
H 23 in W 28 in
Modern British Symbolist Oil Painting Trees Dappled Light in Woodland
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Contemporary British artist, 21st century oil on canvas , unframed size: 23 x 28 inches This came from a private collection of artworks, Surrey, England The painting is in overall v...
Oil
$3,050
H 44.5 in W 29.5 in D 1 in
Trees in a Sunny, Landscape, Original oil Painting, Ready to Hang
By Vahe Yeremyan
Located in Granada Hills, CA
Trees Landscape, Impressionism, Original oil Painting, Ready to Hang Artist: Vahe Yeremyan Work: Original Oil Painting, Handmade Artwork, One of a Kind Medium: Oil on Canvas Year:...
Canvas, Oil
Tree Shadows 220407, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas
By Don Bishop
Located in Yardley, PA
Tree Shadows 220407 is a contemporary tonal landscape painting with nice light and atmosphere. This painting is part of my Tonal Landscapes...
Acrylic
Light Through the Trees, Original Painting
By Janet Dyer
Located in San Francisco, CA
Artist Comments
Tall trees fill the landscape, their trunks adding vertical elements to the scene. Dense foliage filters the sun, creating patches of light and shadow on the gr...
Acrylic
$3,842
H 47.25 in W 35.44 in D 1.58 in
Woodland Shadows -original realism landscape oil painting - contemporary art
By Hazel Thomson
Located in London, Chelsea
We offer complimentary worldwide shipping and cover all tariffs and import taxes for this artwork. This exceptional artwork is currently on display and available for sale at Signet C...
Canvas, Oil
$10,000
H 37.5 in W 25.5 in D 0.8 in
Summer Trees Landscape Impressionism Original oil Painting Ready to Hang
By Eduard Matevosyan
Located in Granada Hills, CA
Artist: Eduard Matevosyan Work: Original Oil Painting, Handmade Artwork, One of a Kind Medium: Oil on Panel Year: 2025 Style: Impressionism, Title: Summer Trees, Size: 37.5" x 25.5...
Oil, Wood Panel
$10,000
H 44 in W 63.5 in D 1 in
Morning Trees, Original oil Painting, Ready to Hang
By Vahe Yeremyan
Located in Granada Hills, CA
Artist: Vahe Yeremyan Work: Original Oil Painting, Handmade Artwork, One of a Kind Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 2023 Style: Impressionism Subject: Morning Trees Size: 44" x 63.5" ...
Canvas, Oil
Tangled Tree - Luminous Contemporary Oil Painting, 21st Century
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
This intimate woodland scene connects to Aeling’s lifelong exploration of the hidden, overlooked spaces within larger landscapes. The twisting vines and dense verticals show his fascination with natural complexity, reminiscent of his early interest in organic forms and his deep study of drawing from life. The luminous clearing in the distance creates a path of visual escape—one of Aeling’s characteristic compositional strategies, reflecting his belief that landscapes should guide the viewer through space as a lived experience, not merely a view. Jeff Aeling Tangled Tree oil on panel 24h x 16w in 60.96h x 40.64w cm JAE056 Jeff Aeling (1958–2025): The Sky Remembers Through Jeff Aeling’s eyes, the landscape becomes a world shaped as much by air as by earth. In works such as North of Las Vegas, NM and Pond Near St. Cloud, MN, he balances the quiet structure of plains and wetlands with skies alive in constant motion. His mastery of atmosphere is unmistakable in Light Pillars (2023) and Light Pillar (2023), where rare optical events turn night into architecture. Even intimate scenes like Crabapple, Dogwoods, and Red Bud find their emotional power under skies that lend the land its shifting character. Aeling’s winters in Hawaii deepened his sensitivity to movement and weather. Surfing taught him to read the rhythm of the ocean, a knowledge reflected in Wave, Kauai (2018), where a breaking wave becomes a luminous wall of force. In Volcano (2023), he channels the islands’ elemental drama, linking fire, vapor, and sky through the same atmospheric vocabulary found in his plains paintings...
Oil, Panel
Dogwoods, Flowering Dogwood Trees in a Wooded Landscape, Oil on Panel
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
This woodland interior captures the shy luminosity of dogwood blossoms scattered across a dim forest floor. Aeling had a lifelong fondness for transitional spaces—the edges of woods,...
Oil, Panel
Forest Stream - Painting of Creek Running Through Forest
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
Aeling has long been drawn to the liminal spaces where forest interiors give way to open meadows. Painted with his characteristic balance of observation and restraint, this woodland ...
Oil, Panel
Three Oaks, Vibrant Green and Blue Landscape Original Oil, Framed - Don Pollack
By Don Pollack
Located in Chicago, IL
Over a hundred years ago, my grandfather registered as a homesteader with the Department of the Interior Land Office in Buffalo, Wyoming. Building a cabin on a remote 640 acre plat,...
Canvas, Oil
Sunset - Fiery Sky with Silhouetted Trees on the Horizon, Oil on Panel, Framed
By Jeff Aeling
Located in Chicago, IL
Sunset is a study in incandescent atmosphere, where the sky ignites in deep reds and oranges that spill downward toward the darkening trees. Aeling’s sensitivity to transitional light—particularly dawn and dusk—was honed both on the Great Plains and during his surfing winters in Hawaii, where he spent countless hours watching the sun drop behind the ocean. Here, the fiery illumination feels both immediate and eternal, a reminder of his fascination with the emotional temperature of the sky. The silhouetted treeline grounds the composition, giving the viewer a point of stability amid the sky’s turbulence. Jeff Aeling Sunset oil on panel 8h x 10w in 20.32h x 25.40w cm JAE024 Jeff Aeling (1958–2025): The Sky Remembers Through Jeff Aeling’s eyes, the landscape becomes a world shaped as much by air as by earth. In works such as North of Las Vegas, NM and Pond Near St. Cloud, MN, he balances the quiet structure of plains and wetlands with skies alive in constant motion. His mastery of atmosphere is unmistakable in Light Pillars (2023) and Light Pillar (2023), where rare optical events turn night into architecture. Even intimate scenes like Crabapple, Dogwoods, and Red Bud find their emotional power under skies that lend the land its shifting character. Aeling’s winters in Hawaii deepened his sensitivity to movement and weather. Surfing taught him to read the rhythm of the ocean, a knowledge reflected in Wave, Kauai (2018), where a breaking wave becomes a luminous wall of force. In Volcano (2023), he channels the islands’ elemental drama, linking fire, vapor, and sky through the same atmospheric vocabulary found in his plains paintings. Though often compared to American landscape painters like Church and Bierstadt, Aeling’s work engages modernity in subtle ways. He began his paintings with the camera—driving for hours to capture a fleeting alignment of cloud, light, and terrain. In the studio, he removed all traces of people or infrastructure, preserving the landscape as a pure, uncontrollable presence. This blend of tradition and contemporary practice allowed him to honor the past while speaking clearly to the present. Together, these works—whether a crashing wave, a blooming tree, a volcanic plume, or a column of winter light—form a portrait of the world as Aeling experienced it: vast, luminous, and alive with change. The Sky Remembers is both a tribute and an invitation to see the land with the reverence he carried throughout his life. Jeff Aeling (1958-2025) Iowa City, IA Represented in Chicago by Gallery VICTOR Education BFA, Painting and Printmaking, Kansas City Art Institute – Kansas City, MO School of the Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL Solo Exhibitions 2016 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2015 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2014 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO 2013 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2012 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2011 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2010 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Richard Demato Fine Arts Gallery - Sag Harbor, NY William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2009 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2008 Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2007 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2006 Tory Folliard Gallery - Milwaukee, WI William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2005 Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL 2005 Philip Slein Gallery - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2004 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM William Havu Gallery - Denver, CO 2003 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ Lisa Kurts Gallery - Memphis, TN Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2002 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Perimeter Gallery - New York, NY 2001 J Mark Sublette Gallery - Tucson, AZ J Mark Sublette Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 2000 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 1999 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art - Kansas City, MO 1998 Charlene Cody Gallery - Santa Fe, NM Elliot Smith Contemporary Art - St. Louis, MO Leedy-Voulkos Art Center Gallery - Kansas City, MO Perimeter Gallery - Chicago, IL 1996 Grand Arts - Kansas City, MO 1994 Gallery V - Kansas City, MO 1993 Sean Kelly Gallery...
Oil, Panel
Miami Woods, Cook County Forest Preserve, Illinois, Original Oil, Framed
By Don Pollack
Located in Chicago, IL
Over a hundred years ago, my grandfather registered as a homesteader with the Department of the Interior Land Office in Buffalo, Wyoming. Building a cabin on a remote 640 acre plat,...
Canvas, Oil
