Jason Engelbart’s digital paintings bridge the timeless and the contemporary. His "Baroque Passion" series transforms the grandeur of historical frescoes into fluid, abstract landscapes. Inspired by baroque masters like Johannes Zick and Guido Reni, he digitally layers, distorts, and reinvents classical elements, creating swirling forms that radiate movement and light. His "Neo Paintings" merge historical opulence with modern abstraction, where colors shift like drifting clouds and light sculpts vast yet intimate spaces. At its core, Engelbart’s work explores presence, perception, and the emotional weight of the unseen—paintings that do not simply depict movement, but seem to exist within it.
Q: Your Baroque Passion series transforms classical fresco aesthetics into contemporary digital compositions. What originally inspired you to merge these two worlds?
A: The inspiration for the Baroque Passion series was a visit to the Würzburg Residence, a palace that once housed the Prince-Bishops of the Bavarian city of Würzburg in Germany. I was overwhelmed when I looked upon the opulent ceiling frescoes inside the baroque palace, painted between 1720 and 1780 by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Antonio Giuseppe Bossi, and Johannes Zick. I felt a deep desire to reflect the splendour of its spirituality in the present, in the form of a series of abstract artistic creations. This laid the foundation for the works that comprise the Baroque Passion series.
Q: Your paintings have a strong sense of movement, almost like shifting light and energy. How do you approach composition to create this effect?
A: My paintings do not follow any kind of predefined image or concept. Instead, I allow my intuition to guide me while I paint, channelling a sense of light and energy into a vibrant and colourful movement. This is how the flowing formations and rhythmic imagery, characteristic of my work, are created. They appear to dissolve, only to immediately emerge once again.
Q: Many of your works, such as "Glory of the Gods" and "Sacred Truth," convey a sense of transcendence. Do you see your art as a form of spiritual exploration?
A: In my artistic work as well as in my daily life, I am constantly seeking to push the boundaries of physical experience and inner consciousness. I am exploring this world on a spiritual level, seeking to move closer to the meaning that can only be found beyond the realms of our physical reality.
Q: Light and shadow play a crucial role in your work, much like in traditional Baroque painting. How do you reinterpret these contrasts in a digital medium?
A: As with traditional forms of painting, first I lay down a base layer that defines the general colour and mood. Then, in a process that is purely driven by emotions, I add further layers with light accents to the more lightly coloured areas. I then add further layers for the darker coloured structures. The digital medium allows me to work on the individual layers again and again, before I finally merge them all into the single layer.
Q: Your Neo Paintings balance historical influences with abstraction. How do you decide how much of the original imagery remains in your compositions?
A: This is one of the challenges of translating historical paintings into a more abstract form. I must find the exact point of balance, where a subtle déjà vu of the historical inspiration becomes tangible for the viewer. If I fail to find this balance, then it simply becomes just another piece of abstract art.
Q: Digital painting allows for endless possibilities in layering and manipulation. How does working digitally shape your creative process compared to traditional methods?
A:Throughout my professional career as an artist and designer, technology and its digital tools have always been central to my creative work. In terms of my digital paintings, working with Photoshop offers me precise control over the colour moods of the individual areas of the image, empowering a fluid compositional process by removing and adding individual image layers. Within these layers, I also paint the colour moods and their flowing forms, typically using simple digital tools like the paintbrush and ‘smudge finger.’
Finally, I compress the overlapping image layers onto a single self-contained layer, to finally work out all the finer details of the abstract work.
In addition, the colour palette truly feels inexhaustible to me.
Q: Your art often feels expansive, as if it extends beyond the edges of the canvas. How does scale influence your work, and do you envision it differently depending on its size?
A: I create a tangible sense of unlimited space in my Neo Paintings by actually painting beyond the edges of the digital canvas. This is an opportunity made possible by working with digital tools. I'm also able to subsequently redefine a particular section of the image when finalizing the piece of work, cropping the image in accordance with my ideas. Any restrictions are lifted when it comes to determining the format of the image, because I'm working with a scalable digital image file, after all. Broadly speaking, the larger the finished work, the greater the opportunities for the viewer to connect with the emotional expression of the piece.
Q: What’s next for you? Are there new techniques or themes you’re excited to explore?
A: It is the nature of the artist to forever search for new and original forms of expression. I remain excited to discover where my artistic journey will take me. For the moment, I continue to be inspired by the Baroque masterpieces.
Other previous work periods include my "Liquid Light" and "Abstract Poems" collections, and can be found on my website: jasonengelbart.de