Rooted in Place: An Interview with Jacob Spacek

I first met Jacob last year at the Contemporary’s Red Dot fundraiser. His relaxed presence felt instantly familiar—I was convinced we had met before, though we hadn’t. We crossed paths again over the summer, when he shared with me his current body of work exploring rural America, history, and community.

Jacob Spacek, Signs #5 from American Rural Series, 2025. Image courtesy of artist.

Kat Deck-Portillo (KDP): You’ve got three paintings in the background. One you’ve shared with me, and the other two look new—one in progress and one I haven’t seen yet. In the one you shared, you’re looking out the passenger-side window.

Jacob Spacek (JS):Yes. I try not to take photos that way, but this one was just too good. My wife actually took that picture.

KDP: They all feel rural. I can’t explain why, but they feel inherently Texan. That also connects to the idea of relics you’ve mentioned being interested in—these rural spaces and objects. How do you see these relics still being relevant today?

JS: Well, in the same way we’re fascinated by the pyramids, old temples, or churches—things made by past generations—these rural relics capture history. I love looking at them.  I love history and things like that.s a little, I see these things. Many come from my grandfather’s generation. Something that was once brand new and now it’s 70, even 80 years later and they're either abandoned in a field or they’ve become lawn decorations. They’ve found it in an antique shop. They treat them almost like sculptures.  

KDP: Like the painting of the flea market. Someone found this once-functional object, and now it’s purely decorative—sculptural, as you said.

Jacob Spacek, Signs #4 from American Rural Series, 2025. Image courtesy of artist.

JS: That’s actually right down the street from where I went to school in La Vernia. There’s an old metal building used as a flea market. They put a sign out front, and on top of it someone mounted this old machine—maybe a mower, I’m not sure. The sign itself is dented, like it was hit by a car. It’s so characteristic of where I grew up: objects repurposed with meaning. Whoever placed it there had a relationship with it. Maybe it belonged to their grandparents. Maybe they rode it as a kid. That personal history is what interests me. And as an artist, the forms themselves are infinitely interesting.

KDP: You then translate those sculptural forms into two-dimensional paintings. But it’s not just the form—you’re also using color in a way that challenges realism. Sometimes your choices remind me of Matisse or the Fauves: expressive, saturated in places, desaturated in others. When you paint, how do you decide on color?

JS: I’d been photographing these relics for years but didn’t start painting them until 2024. Back in 2020, when I returned to this part of Texas, I noticed them everywhere while driving backroads to my parents’ house. At first I imagined painting them in a looser, more gestural style—like Jenny Saville or de Kooning. But instead, I started experimenting with my phone. I used the Markup app, which only had a limited palette. That restriction forced me to make creative color decisions. I couldn’t use brown, for example, so I had to think about how to suggest rust using other tones. That flatness and the relationships between sky, trees, and ground became essential. It makes the object recognizable but also slightly off-kilter—forcing the viewer to pause and reconsider the object’s history.

KDP: And all of that began from working within a limited iPhone palette.

JS: Yeah, and that's how it started now. And I've upgraded to different apps, but that limitation set the tone. My whole life I’ve been obsessed with vintage colors—like the old Houston Astros jerseys with bold but slightly faded tones. It plays into the whole idea of a relic, of history, of looking back at things. I also have my dad’s old radio station T-shirt: originally black, but by the time I inherited it, washed into gray. Those washed-out, worn colors suggest history, use, and memory.

KDP: Which connects back to your subject matter—objects once functional, now worn and reimagined. I especially think about your painting of the water tank, and also the fence painting you have behind you.

JS: This one came together really fast. It’s almost finished—just needs another coat of yellow. Anytime you paint yellow, it takes multiple coats. But yes, the fence imagery is everywhere in Texas. 

Jacob Spacek, Untitled from American Rural Series, 2025. Image courtesy of artist.

KDP: On a recent road trip through rural Texas, I noticed the same thing—fences actively used alongside abandoned ones. That duality comes through in your painting. It reminds me of Monet’s haystacks: the same subject, but transformed by time, season, and light. Your work has that same sense of variation and attention to color.

JS: Funny you say that—one of those paintings isn’t from Texas. It’s from Missouri, near my sister-in-law’s place. It was winter, and the ground was snowy. That blue you see in the painting is actually snow. The tall sprout in the picture was just grass missed by the mower. I liked the mix of cool winter blues and the golden remnants of fall.

KDP: That interplay between seasons is very much like Monet’s haystacks. And then you have another work called American Gleaners, which made me think of Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners. There’s an art-historical conversation happening in your work—between European references and American rural imagery.

Jacob Spacek, Gleaning from American Rural Series, 2025. Image courtesy of artist.

JS: Definitely. That one ties back to both Millet and the biblical story of Ruth, which I was reading at the time. Ruth survived by gleaning in the fields—gathering what was left after harvest. That connection between survival, generosity, and overlooked remnants resonated with me. I saw echoes of it in the landscape photos I was taking, and it felt important to memorialize.

KDP: So it’s both a historical and personal layer. You’ve mentioned the Bible as a source of history for you, not just faith. Can you expand on how you read it that way, and how it informs your work?

JS: The Bible is a historical record as much as a religious text. Some books are genealogies, lists, or legal codes—like reading archives or law books. Others are stories or prophecies. When I read those, I’m thinking of them as documents of lived experience. So when I come across words like “cistern” in Jeremiah, it resonates with what I see in rural Texas—these old water tanks. That’s how the work got its name. I wasn’t even sure if what I painted technically was a cistern, but the symbolic connection worked. And of course, tanks and silos are vessels: they can be full or empty, sustaining or neglected. That symbolism runs deep.

Jacob Spacek, Untitled from American Rural Series, 2025. Image courtesy of artist.

KDP: That also speaks to community—grain stored for many, water for survival. You’re layering physical, historical, and spiritual meanings.

JS: Exactly. I’m still working through those ideas. Each new painting opens up more questions. Some include roads, fences, or arrows—suggesting movement, crossroads, or directions beyond the canvas. The deeper I dive into these objects and places, the more symbolism I find.

KDP: Which is what makes the work rich. We began talking about relics and color choices, and we’ve now gone through Monet, Millet, Ruth, cisterns, and personal memory. Your work invites that kind of questioning. Hopefully, viewers of this interview will bring those same questions to your paintings.