After growing up primarily in Southern California, Jeffrey Dale had the opportunity to travel. His father was an explorer who wanted his family to see the world and felt it was important enough for Jeff to miss a year of high school to travel intensively. By the time he was 16, Jeff had been around the world. Absorbing the influences of many different cultures, some of those places being Hawaii, Japan, India, and Egypt, he developed a multi-cultural aesthetic.
After years of moving and travel, his family settled on the East Coast. While in High School in 1965, Jeffrey attended Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC for a couple of summers, while also apprenticing with Gene Davis, an abstract color painter. After graduation he attended the Maryland Institute of Art, which he left after a year and a half to move to Coastal Marin, California, seeking more freedom of creativity. Though a painter coming from the art world, he had a desire to ground his art-form in the practical and functional. For five years he apprenticed with Robert Callagy, building handmade wooden homes in Bolinas. During this time, his craft evolved to interior design and the utilitarian objects inside homes, thus furniture.
A world traveler from a young age, he's also been an artist and craftsman since he was three years old. Jeff creates studio furniture hand-shaped from highly figured solid hardwoods.
As a surfer and coastal explorer, he's drawn to the ocean and spends a lot of time looking at the coastline from a different perspective. Jeff often incorporates materials, shapes, and colors from nature into his work. He is now finding a balance between art and function, blending painting and furniture into one and moving into unexplored territory.