Inger Jirby Art Gallery Reception Video (3min 38sec). Chamber of Commerce function and artist open house at the Inger Jirby Gallery in Taos.
In Taos, Inger has established the Inger Jirby Gallery on Historic Ledoux Street in a gracious adobe home. The gallery is, as she says, the biggest adventure of my life. To meet the vast demand for her work, she continues to have museum shows and gallery exhibitions around the world. She is thrilled to be settled in Taos being able to work right on her doorstep, and to be surrounded by the incredible landscape subjects for her art.
Her quest for color is unquenchable. In search of new subjects, she takes regular painting trips all over the world - lately Bali and then to Mexico. Morocco is next, and then India, countries where the people are as passionate about color as the big colorists.
In the course of her travels, Inger does far more than paint. With a restless intelligence and great curiosity, she immerses herself in the life and history of the countries she visits, pursuing interests in folk art, architecture, archeology and languages.
Inger Jirbys life has been as rich, dramatic and exotic as her art. She was born in the far north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle in Lappland, a place of blazing colors and great cultural traditions. Her earliest memories are bathed in a bright palette, the same colors that characterize her passion-filled fauvist paintings.
She began painting as a young girl and never stopped. Her first hero was Van Gogh, followed by the big colorists, Bonnard and Matisse. Later influences included Braque, Picasso, Milton Avery, The Fauves and the Abstract Expressionists artists who pioneered the emotional and spiritual power of color.
After a short stay at Konstfack in Stockholm, she moved to the Greek island of Mykonos where she studied privately. Though still in her early 20s, she began to support herself as an artist. Two years later she relocated to Paris, studied at the Ecole des-Beaux -Artes at rue du Seine, and had her first solo show in a well-know gallery La Palette Blue.
From Paris she traveled to Venice, then back to Greece. She then went to Jamaica in the West Indies, and finally settled in New York for ten years. Ingers gypsy life began to slow down when she discovered northern New Mexico first Santa Fe and now Taos. She has committed herself to the small, beautiful town which is so rich in artistic and cultural traditions a perfect environment for her life and art.
