Available for commission
Jennifer Pazienza Art Studio, Keswick Ridge, NB Canada
Keswick Ridge, Canada
"The visual dance between abstraction and representation, the gestural lines, atmospheric colours and shapes that are signature features in the lyrical landscape paintings I make emerge from a couple of yellows, reds, blues and titanium white; a limited palette with endless possibilities."
My appetite for the joys and responsibilities of living an aesthetic life, I owe to my mom. Although she died when I was nine, her good influence sustains me today. To my earnest pleas to take ballet and piano lessons she’d would tear open a large brown grocery store bag and tell me to draw! And draw and paint I did at our Italian-American New Jersey kitchen table, while she’d be using the same kind of bag to drain the eggplant she was frying. The dull brown paper transformed into glistening hues of Umber, Sienna and Ochre. The flour, egg and fresh breadcrumb coating insured a crispy crunch that would give way to creamy melanzane interiors, developing in me a taste for contrasting colours and textures, sights and smells, sounds too. Nearly 20 years of waiting tables earned me 3 post secondary degrees and a ticket to an art education professorship at the University of New Brunswick 30 years ago. Italian/American and Canadian for the last 30 years, I live with my husband Gerry Clarke and our dog Mela on Keswick Ridge, New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada.
Q&A
How do your pieces come to life? Tell us one interesting thing about your creative process?
"No Payne’s Grey for me. As you can see in my banner image, I organize my palette around a couple of Cadmium yellows and reds, French Ultramarine, Cerulean and Manganese blue, Titanium white. In 1985 my painting professor, noted American painter Richard Mayhew suggested I ditch my tube of Payne’s Gray, and exchange a tonal painting approach for a colorist one. He also encouraged me to let the wisdom of the natural world guide my work. 35 years later and I have yet to exhaust the possibilities of working this way."
Jennifer Pazienza Art Studio, Keswick Ridge, NB Canada