Resident artist takes to painting after digital art career

by Charles Cassady

“It’s been a good adventure,” said Independence resident Jeff Poplar, of his late-blooming career in fine art – particularly his acclaimed oil/pastel paintings.

If you think you haven’t yet seen Poplar’s work, you’re probably wrong. Not all art can be found in galleries. Poplar had a 46-year career in local commercial art, rendering a variety of product labels and ephemera, and working with agencies, art studios and business clients.

Most fruitfully (and vegetably), he contributed imagery in the graphics department of Heinen’s supermarket chain for two decades. Poplar created “private-label” coffee packaging, plus local-interest notepads and postcards.

“It was kind of a nostalgia-based design,” he said. “Anybody who shops at Heinen’s could pick them up.”

In terms of sheer popularity, Poplar’s masterpieces were a series of Cleveland-themed tote bags. “In fact, they gave me an award – I should have asked for royalties. They sold pallets of those,” he said.

In his commercial-art life, Poplar, and others like him, trained in the 1980s/90s in digital techniques, which Poplar described as “strictly Apple-based all the way, strictly Macs [and] Adobe Illustrator.”   

Now on his own terms, he returned to the traditional paint media he used in his early student days at Cleveland’s Cooper School of Art – brushes, oils, gouache, pastel sticks and palette knives. He has produced freehand artistic canvases for galleries and collectors, priced at $300 aand upwards.

So far, Poplar has not participated in the public art show/sales that proliferate in this area in the warm-weather months. “I seem to have found a home in galleries,” he said.

Cityscapes – sometimes rendered as rainy, impressionistic, after-dark views with bold slashes of lines and color – have gained Poplar attention, as have his abstracts, figure studies and nature studies. His work has been carried in The Glass Studio in Avon, the Broadview Studio in Cleveland, and, on Cleveland’s west side, the popular multi-story warren of art spaces called the 78th Street Studios.

This spring he had a showcase with the Geauga Parks District’s Community Art Exhibition, held at the West Woods Nature Center in Russell Township. Three of his submissions were accepted, and they emphasized his nature studies and landscapes.

“You can look at anything in nature – trees, clouds – and see something new every time,” said Poplar. “I feel a ‘connection,’ if that is not too corny.

“As far as cityscapes being the same thing, I like to do local things. … I especially skew towards restaurants, old restaurants, night and day – what brings the character of the place from the outside.”

A current fascination, he said, is Nighttown, the generations-favorite Cleveland Heights restaurant (first opened in 1965 and recently remodeled) housed in a 1920 building and constructed to evoke the sort of pub and eatery one might encounter in Dublin, Ireland. “What I’m after [is] I’m trying to bring out the personality,” Poplar said.

He said he is not seeking commercial-type commissions from Nighttown management or any other businesses or restaurants whose exteriors strike his fancy. “If it comes about, that’s fine, but right now my concentration is to enter shows, get into galleries,” Poplar said.

His first fine-art showing, at Avon’s Glass Factory, was a rousing success. “First show out of the box. I didn’t know what to expect.” But not only did all three of his pieces sell; he also won a special “Peer Review” award. “I really valued that,” he said. “All those peers and artists saying ‘good job.’”

The Garfield Heights native and his wife have lived in Independence for 32 years. Locally, he said he has found the most visual interest in the façade of the converted redbrick fire station on Brecksville Road that is now Historic Hall, home to the Independence Historical Society. Poplar said he has made a few preliminary drawings but has not generated any large-scale work based on it.

There is always tomorrow though, as in a very big way, he is just beginning to explore. “I would consider myself new to the fine-art world,” he said. “I’ve only been doing this three years now.”

His website, jeffpoplar.com, includes samples and news of past and present exhibitions. ∞

Poplar is the artist behind the
popular Cleveland tote bag
designs, found at Heinen’s
grocery stores. Photo submitted.

This painting is entitled “A Cold Night in Peninsula.” Photo submitted.

Photo (above): Jeff Poplar. Photo submitted.