William Faulkner understood it. Larry Brown understood it. And Jared Spears understands it, too. What the two writers did with language to capture the essence of the landscape of the North Mississippi Hill Country, Spears does with the same calm understanding through his brushstrokes. 

Jared Spears’ world is a place of soggy bottoms, of sandy creek beds, of rolling pastures, of ominous skies. It is a place where the storm lingers in the low sky, waiting to settle across the Mississippi marsh. It is a place where the sun cuts through the haze and dots the water with a sullen and hopeful light. It is a place where the kudzu creeps and crawls and darkens the swallowed terrain. It is a place that is alive and changing, and Spears captures its shadows, its sunrise, its tranquility, and its dangers, with emotion and grace.  

Creating emotion on a canvas seems to me to be a special kind of artistic skill. I feel the melancholy, the sadness, and the relief of night, as moonlight drapes the bogs. I sense the promise of morning in the ghostly sunrise and feel the dread and suspense in the gathering of shadows. And I can hear the sounds of the wild as creatures move through the thicket, slide beneath the water, creeping across the land as both predator and prey. The best art is the art that feels alive, and Spears’ vision of this world that he understands, that he truly knows, has a strong and thrumming heartbeat. 

-Michael Farris Smith, author of Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, and Rivers.