Text by Elizabeth Czapski
In 2000, Justin Gaffrey had just sold his restaurant in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where he’d also worked as a chef, and had turned to furniture building while contemplating his next step. One day, inspiration struck, and he began painting a folk art scene on one of his furnishings—and never looked back.
“I loved building furniture—I still do—but I didn’t want to make a career out of it,” Justin says. “When I painted on the piece of furniture, I enjoyed it so much that I tried a painting the next day, and I literally have not stopped since. [At that point], I had every bit of time to devote to whatever I wanted to do. I’m an obsessive worker, and I was used to working 80 hours a week, so I just jumped into it.”
As an untrained painter, Justin decided to start out with a style that felt familiar and approachable: primitive folk art. He focused on this method for a year and a half, and while he says it was a good “catalyst” for his artistic career, he was soon ready to explore a different type of expression—something that became clear to him when he saw a Vincent van Gogh painting in person for the first time. “I looked at it and understood what Impressionism is,” Justin recalls. “It’s a conglomeration of lots of little strokes that make an impression of something.”
Captivated by the depth of impasto-style painting, he immediately dove into practicing it. “I painted with a lot of house paint back then with the folk art,” Justin says. “So, I mixed latex caulk and house paint together and started to mimic an impressionistic brushstroke, and that’s basically where everything changed.” Eventually moving on to acrylic paint, Justin found himself using more and more texture in his artwork. “I had more fun doing it that way,” he says. “I was able to be more expressive.”
This inclination toward very thick, sculptural paint—and lots of it—began to sow the seeds of an aspiration to create his own formula, a goal that came to fruition in 2020 after much trial and error. Today at gaffrey art material, Justin and his two children manufacture their distinctive acrylic paints in his Santa Rosa Beach studio turned paint factory, offering the ideal heavy texture Justin always desired for his works.
As with the facets of his career, Justin’s subjects continue to evolve inherently—many of which are influenced by the natural surrounds of his scenic hometown on the Northwest Florida coast. Flowers were his first foray into Impressionism, as he enjoyed the freedom of creating colorful compositions that didn’t need to be organically correct. From there, he expanded to landscapes and seascapes, which have since become his dominant style. “They’re heavily inspired by our region here,” Justin says. “It is who I am and where I spend a lot of my time, so it comes very naturally for me to paint that.”
Recently, he’s also ventured into more conceptual pieces that deal with the human condition, which he says has brought his artistic work full circle, drawing from both what he sees and what he feels. “I love that exploration part of art,” Justin says. “It’s easy to have an inspiration from something you see. The conceptual work is based on ideas and thoughts. When I do that now, all of my art feels really cohesive with everything as humans—what we love and who we are.”
And while Justin believes that people gravitate toward the uniquely sculptural presentation of his paintings, he says it’s the passion behind them that provides the most meaningful pull. “It’s not common to see these compositions in such texture,” he explains. “It really draws you in, but I think it’s just the beginning. The expressiveness of what I do—I’m very rambunctious. There’s a lot of movement in the work. It’s a life-fulfilling thing, and I think people like to be a part of somebody doing what they really love.”
For more information, visit justingaffrey.com.
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