Jenni’s art draws on patterns and shapes in the landscape; inspired by what she sees around her. Her work expresses the figure, and the complexity of the land, the sea and the sky. Occasionally captured by the power of an image she creates works that share that power with the observer. Often the work created is like a stranger, only seen accurately out of the corner of the eye or in an unexpected reflection. Her greatest pleasure is when her work brings together the subject, memories and impressions and the moment.
Like thousands of Australian artists, many of whom are women, Jenni has no wish to live without art and enjoys the freedom of creation. All amateur artists create art for the love of their art. Many women artists who create art don’t seek celebrity, but their art resonates with their peers and often achieves a core of expression. Jenni aspires to be like those women, enjoying the thrill of creation, hoping to create something that resonates with the viewer.
As well as portraiture, Jenni’s current practice focuses largely on Australian urbanscapes. Commuting on a daily basis, she observes and experiments with capturing the ever-changing light and colour in Australia.
Her first job as a young woman was working with animation artist, Lee Doré, exploring animation for black and white television and the delights of textures and shapes using Windsor and Newton shades of grey. She worked as a graphic artist with the University of New South Wales and later with Information Design Pty Ltd.
For five years (2006-11), Jenni painted with the widely respected artist and teacher (now deceased) Roy Churcher. Betty Churcher AO (Director of the Australian National Gallery 1990-97, painter, teacher, art critic, author and gallery director – part of the lifeblood of the visual arts in Australia) was also a friend and generous mentor, graciously taking interest in Jenni’s work as she did with all artists. Roy encouraged Jenni to paint people, and ever since has enjoyed working on the landscape of the face.
Norm Magnusson stated that art should
- be intellectually engaging without being intellectually elitist
- be as much fun to look at as it is to think about, and
- invite interpretation.
Albert Camus wrote in his essay “Create Dangerously”
“The loftiest work will always be… the work that maintains an equilibrium between reality and man’s rejection of that reality, each forcing the other upward in a ceaseless overflowing, characteristic of life itself at its most joyous and heart-rending extremes.
“Reality cannot be reproduced without exercising a selection… The only thing needed, then, is to find a principle of choice that will give shape to the world.
“The artist chooses his object as much as he is chosen by it. ….. Art is neither complete rejection nor complete acceptance of what is. It is simultaneously rejection and acceptance, and this is why it must be a perpetually renewed wrenching apart. The artist constantly lives in such a state of ambiguity, incapable of negating the real and yet eternally bound to question it in its eternally unfinished aspects.”