Bio

Jeff Srsic was born in Pittsburg, PA and grew up through various parts of Virginia with family and independently as an adult.

Only taking a semester of art classes while attending community college, Jeff disliked the structure of formal art education and decided to branch out on his own. Inspired by the dramatic themes of renaissance painters like Caravaggio, Rubens, and Van Eck, Jeff absorbed the styling of these Masters and created his own approach to thematic oil paintings.

Relocating to Tampa, FL in early 2006 Jeff joined Redletter1, a tattoo gallery in Tampa where he is approaching his 19th year of tattoo artistry. Jeff has been commissioned for paintings independently outside of his professional tattoo work and has shown in several galleries throughout the United States.

Artist Statement

A self-taught tattoo artist, Jeff Srsic primarily works with oils on canvas and expands his mediums to acrylic, and most recently sculpture. “I enjoy oils because of the ability to layer transparent colors to create depth.”

While painting Jeff utilizes the influence of music, preferring to wear headphones while mixing a range of music to parallel the emotion he is emitting onto canvas.His chosen environment for painting mostly occurs at Redletter1, a Tampa based tattoo shop, and also at his home studio when space becomes compromised at Redletter1.

Typically Jeff depicts various skulls in his paintings; “it’s a very basic symbol of life and death” he notes. The structure and texture of bone is both a romantic approach to our very basic being as human in raw form. Found inspiration for the theme of Jeff’s work is based on his photography. He feels that it is important to use his own photography to create a piece from start to finish originally from his ideas.