About
The Artist
Jeffers' original artwork has been exhibited at museums and institutions across the globe. He has had multiple solo shows in galleries in London and New York, and is represented by the world-renowned gallery, Praise Shadows Art Gallery, in Boston, MA. Varying between figurative painting, naive folk-like line work, which is often tied together with his distinctive handwriting, Jeffers' work is instantly recognisable. Themes for his art-making include perspective shifts, memory and mortality, the power of community and story, and the imaginary lines across the land and in the sky. Seeded with a distrust of nationalism, patriotism, and isolationism – from growing up with the political and national uncertainty of a turbulent Belfast in the 1970s and 80s – much of his current art picks apart the powerful story of human-made borders, of how people treat one another, and the futility of acting with such disunity given the reality that we are floating through space on a ball that is becoming increasingly hostile to life. In contrast, Jeffers uses the construct of star constellations to take a longer lens approach to humanity's story, and with that, asks us to reframe our collective future narrative to be a better one than we currently tell.
The Storyteller
From his much-loved debut, How to Catch a Star, Oliver has gone on to create a collection of award-winning and bestselling picture books, which have been translated all over the globe, including the #1 New York Times bestseller and TIME Best Book of the Year Here We Are, as well as the companion What We’ll Build. He is also the illustrator of the smash hits The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home, both written by Drew Daywalt. His 21st picture book, Where to Hide a Star, will be released in October 2024.
The Commentator
Curiosity and humour are underlying themes throughout Oliver's practice as an artist and storyteller. While investigating the ways the human mind understands its world, his work also functions as comic relief in the face of futility. At a recent climate conference, instead of being marked an ‘artist’, Jeffers was designated an ‘observer and translator’. And this is how he so often use his platform, to observe and comment on happenings within the world with a gentle lean on positive change, rather than adding to the noise of anger reverberating around the planet. To take big issues, and make them accessible and digestible, and provide an entry point of hope for people to involve themselves.
