By Helen Harlan 

As a 12-year-old growing up in East Sacramento’s River Park, Jeff Musser spent his days doing typical things for boys in the late 1980s. He played baseball and video games, and rode his bike with friends, often getting into trouble. 

“You could take all that away, and I would still focus on drawing. I didn’t love to do anything else as much as I loved being in my room, drawing,” Musser recalls.

As an adult, Musser is a contemporary figurative painter who has practiced worldwide for over two decades. Much of his work is influenced by issues of race and whiteness, which have affected him since childhood. Now 47, he is settled in Sacramento and lives with his partner, Phuong Tran, co-owner of local eateries Southside Super and Fish Face Poke Bar. His workspace in their downtown home is covered in collages he describes as paintings in progress. 

“Collage is how most paintings start. I’ve also been creating collages on their own using spray paint, charcoal, ink and pencil as sketches for future paintings,” Musser explains from his home studio, which he keeps at a frigid 60 degrees.

After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Musser spent two years working in advertising in The Windy City, designing promotional materials for McDonald’s Happy Meals and various movies.

“I absolutely hated it because I wasn’t painting or drawing when I got home,” he says. “I can’t be creative for someone else and not have a say in how it turns out.”

Musser’s C.V. reads like a well-stamped passport: He lived in Shanghai for one summer in 2014 and his work has been shown from Berlin to São Paolo to Brooklyn to Brea, California. He’s featured in private collections, including Oprah Winfrey’s, with whom he was connected in Chicago. He says meeting with Winfrey to discuss his work was “surreal.”

Musser notes that life as a Sacramento artist has its pros and cons. 

“You can pretty much do whatever you want and put on your own events without the pressures of needing to create works for sales or the demands of a commercial gallery that may push you to change your artwork,” he says. “The downside is that if you don’t create conservative, easy-to-sell Sacramento cityscapes or Wayne Thiebaud-esque landscape paintings, it can be a tough road.”

Musser’s take on the necessary shifts in how the average person views art and artists goes beyond Sacramento. 

“The change that needs to happen in people’s minds is what I think has to happen in America at large: The arts are an essential part of society that we need to invest in,” he says. “You can see the health of a community and people within it when they recognize the value of their creative contributions.”

When he feels overwhelmed, Musser does what many do to vent: He posts exhausted SpongeBob SquarePants memes on Instagram, as he did on June 14 last year. 

“That day, I don’t remember exactly,” Musser says with a laugh, reflecting on what motivated him to post the meme of the discombobulated yellow pop-culture icon. “It might have been around a deadline for this really big fellowship I was applying for, and I had to edit another draft of the proposal, but then I also had to spend a certain amount of time painting. I had to spend a certain amount of time answering emails. Sometimes, you’re being pulled in so many different directions, and it just becomes overwhelming.”

Jeff Musser works from his home studio in Sacramento. (Photo by Jeff Musser)

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.