On Wednesday April 25th, the Charlotte Millennial Art Program invited me to speak at Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art in Charlotte, NC. In this lecture, “Demystifying Abstraction,” I share a brief history of abstraction, talk about my painting process, inspiration, life as an artist, and why making art matters. The talk is followed by a Q&A session where we go into more detail about my education, philosophy, and where art comes from.
If you liked this, check out this video. I’ll show you how I made one of my abstract paintings.
I walk in the mornings after bringing Noah to school. I look, listen, breathe. I take in the shapes of light and shadow, the myriad greens, the pinks, violets, reds, birdsong, my favorite wind chime. I get as close as I can to birds before they fly away, try to get close enough to see their tiny chests moving with their breath. I look up at the big sky, taking in the sunlight-filled blues, the racing clouds, or the broad plush grays. My morning walks are one of my favorite parts of my day. Moving, feeling the cold or warm air on my face, thinking, sometimes even figuring things out! I take the light, shapes, colors, sounds, smells, back to my studio. I’ll keep trying to filter all of these experiences into my painting.
A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary by hiking at our beloved Pilot Mountain. The state park is located thirty minutes North-West of Winston Salem. We enjoy hiking there year-round and camping there in the shoulder season. This mountain is my current obsession and the inspiration for the series of paintings I’m working on. Between the rock, trees, sky, earth, air, and birdsong, Pilot Mountain is IT. I’ll share with you a little bit of the Ledge Spring trail in the video below. Enjoy!
The Field You Think You Own, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, 2014
This is “The Field You Think You Own.” I’ll share with you where the name for this painting comes from.
When I lived in Cornelius, NC, there was a nearby field that I would go paint. The space was vast, and there were areas covered with trees. Each time I returned to the field to paint, the landscape had changed. The tree line receded. A development was built near the trees, then little by little more houses and apartments were built. Then a shopping center was added. The field disappeared. This painting is a love letter to that field.
This painting is currently on view at Elder Gallery in Charlotte, NC.
I grew up in a bicultural household. My father is American and my mother French. French was my first language and I learned to speak English in kindergarten. I remember the very distinct feeling of not knowing what the heck was going on while sitting cross legged on the classroom floor. We moved around a lot: from Maine to North Carolina, to France where we lived in Montpellier, the suburbs of Paris, and Tours, and back to North Carolina. Then I made my way north through school: undergrad in Virginia, grad school in Delaware – studying studio art then focusing on painting in grad school. After falling in love with cycling during school, I met my future husband at a bike race in Pennsylvania and moved in with him in Philadelphia. While working as an artist, I also worked in adventure travel, raced bikes, taught yoga and art as an adjunct. We moved to Australia where our son was born, then back Stateside to North Carolina where we settled in Winston-Salem.
Throughout all the moving around over the years, the constant has been art-making. I have figured out that I am my best self when I regularly sustain my artistic practice. I have a visceral need to create. It’s how I connect to the world and how I make sense of things.
on the way to Bodega Bay in California… Photo Credit: Rebecca Falls
I have juggled many jobs, but over the last 13 years I have balanced two careers, one in the adventure travel industry and one as an artist. In 2005 I had been out of grad school for a year, was teaching art at University of Delaware and working at a bike shop when I first saw a Trek Travel catalog. I looked them up and saw they were looking for new guides. After a notoriously grueling hiring process, I got the job. It has taken me 13 years to figure out how to successfully juggle my work with Trek Travel and my art career. I started as a guide and now work primarily as a Trip Designer, allowing me to work mostly from home, where I also maintain an art studio. The outside spaces I’ve been lucky enough to work in over the last decade have been perfect fodder for my imagination and are a constant source of inspiration in my artwork.
Artist Jessica Singerman in the studio. Photo Credit: David Rolfe/Journal
Thank you to Lisa O’Donnell, the Winston-Salem Journal, and Relish for publishing a story about my work today. The article is below or check it out on the Journal website.
Shortly after giving birth to her son five years ago, artist Jessica Singerman had a revelation.
“I realized I was losing my sense of self,” said Singerman, 37. “The most obvious way to get it back was to start making art every single day rather than sporadically. I regained my sense of self, and I wanted to show my son, as he grew up, that I was hardworking.”
It’s doubtful anyone would question Singerman’s work ethic. For years, she worked for an outdoors adventure group, leading bicycle trips through Europe. She has scaled that back to about one trip a year, with the birth of her son, but still designs trips for the group. This semester, she is also working as interim director of Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University.
Once her son goes to bed, she retreats to her home studio around 8:30 p.m., to paint for about three hours.
“At this point, I’ve been trying to figure out how to be a professional artist, how to make a living as a fine artist,” said Singerman, who grew up in Davidson and France.
She and her husband, Tim Bowman, who is a staff member of the UNC School of Arts’ film department, moved to Winston-Salem about two years ago.
Singerman’s art can be viewed and bought at her website, www.jessicasingerman.com/shop. Her work is also at Sunnyside Mercantile, 724 N. Trade St.
Q:How would you describe your art?
Answer: My paintings are abstract with references to nature: mountains, forests, fields and big skies are conjured through layers of shape and line in vivid color. For my large pieces on canvas and panel, I use oil and acrylic paint. With smaller works on paper, I use a variety of media: watercolor, graphite, ink and collage for example. My work is inspired by the poetry of nature: color and light in the landscape, seasons and the passing of time.
Q:How have you evolved as an artist?
Answer: My working habits have changed as I have gotten older. I now understand that art comes from working regularly rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. It’s about showing up every day, making mistakes, exploring, plugging away at paintings and drawings until the good stuff happens — the magic. I trust my process. If I set out to work on a large painting, I know it will go through a variety of stages before it is complete. Some of these stages are pretty awful-looking and some have interesting things happening. A finished painting strikes a balance between refinement, roughness, drama, romance and awkwardness — this is what makes it beautiful and human.
Q:Who has influenced your art?
Answer: The artists whose work I study most often are Richard Diebenkorn and the Bay Area Figurative Artists of the 1950s and ’60s, Amy Sillman and Cy Twombly. Mary Oliver’s poetry is an influence. My parents have been steadfast supporters of my work as an artist — and have influenced my work ethic. They are both hard-working people who have always and still work — day in and day out — without complaining. They are positive and forward thinking about their work, even when it’s difficult or doesn’t go the way they planned.
Q:What is your biggest challenge?
Answer: I imagine it’s the same challenge most working parents deal with. I’d like to spend more time with my son. I work two day jobs in addition to painting and running the business side of art making, which is a small business in itself. On the one hand, I want to demonstrate a hard work ethic for my son and keep growing my art career. On the other hand, I’d like to spend more time with him.
Q:What does art do for you?
Answer: Painting connects me to the world. When I paint, I am a part of something bigger than myself, a whole lineage of painters and artists and the current community of artists who explored and continue to explore what it means to be human through their work.
When I am working, I am drawn into a realm that transcends me. I am reminded about what is real and what matters most. It is through painting that I can quiet my mind, make sense of life, and explore spirituality. Making art is my voice.
Q:Any advice for other artists?
Answer: Show up. Don’t wait for inspiration. If you have to get a day job, get one that leaves you with enough mental energy to still do your artwork. Get in the studio even when you’re tired. Work your ass off. Prioritize your time in the studio. Have your work space always ready so you can get to work quickly. If you don’t have a dedicated work space, pack a kit with your supplies that you can easily move around as needed. Stay consistent. Keep chipping away at your work. Even 15 or 30 minutes of work a day can add up to something big if you do it religiously.
Last night we shot the process of painting a series of small works on paper. Working on this particular set of paintings is a meditative process. While I work on pieces like these, I focus and get into a “zone” if you will. For these paintings I used a very limited palette and improvised. During this process I am looking at composition – the way the marks of paint, ink, and graphite interact with each other and the space around them. Elements such as how light or dark a mark is against another mark, the speed of brush marks, the direction in which I pull the brush, all these aspects come into play in the finished piece. I enjoy how paired down this process is – I’m not working with an image or a plan in mind. This is a truly meditative process during which I am 100% focused – all superfluous thoughts fall away. For me, this is the essence of painting and it ties into being in tune with nature. This sense of being in the “zone” or at one with a process is similar to the feeling I get when I am riding my bike or running hard – when all the extraneous noise falls away, and the experience of moving through space becomes the only thing that matters at that very moment.
Light Igniting Fields, Trailing Clouds, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, 2016
I am writing a series of blog posts in which I will answer questions about my work from friends. If you have a question, connect with me on Instagram or Facebook and ask!
The first part of this series comes from a question by Mark Sullivan, owner of the Cycle Path bike shop in Cornelius, NC. He asks: “Where do your inspirations come from?”
Riding my bike – whether surrounded by fields, forest, or mountains – inspires me. The feelings associated with outdoor activities inspire me: warm sunlight on my face, cold wind on my cheeks, the way light changes when you are hiking in the woods and step into a clearing, the elation after reaching a mountain summit, the feeling of flying when you are cycling fast on the road, the sense of oneness when you are quickly weaving through trees on a narrow trail, and so on. I am inspired by the poetry of nature: color and light in the landscape, seasons, and the passing of time. In my abstract paintings, I am translating these fleeting moments onto the canvas. Rather than painting a landscape that looks like a photograph, I am interested in evoking the feelings associated with being outside or conjuring memories of outdoor experiences. My work is both inspired by the outdoors and also a reminder to go outside.
How to Satisfy the Bird, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, 2017 — $2300
If we pay any attention to the media these days, it seems current events defeat logic.
It’s all depressing and makes us feel separate from each other and alone.
So I will continue painting because it cuts through the noise. When I paint, I am a part of something bigger than myself. I am connected to a lineage of painters and artists who explored what it means to be human through their work.
Making art and looking at it builds empathy. When we look at a painting, we are standing where a painter – another person, stood before us. We are confronted with what they saw when they painted, seeing what they saw through our own eyes. We find stories in paintings, and connect to those stories through our own experiences. When we look at art we connect to other people we may never meet.
When we look at art, we think about something bigger than ourselves. We are reminded about what is real and what matters. Because my experience outdoors fuels me as a human and as an artist, painting is a reminder to go outside and BE and look around myself and to be appreciative.
When I paint shapes and their edges bleed into each other, I am reminded of the truth of what it means to be human. Walls fall away. We are all more similar than we are different. We are connected by our experience as human beings.
So I will keep painting. I’ll keep waking early and staying up too late, puttering around in the studio and pushing paint, and trying to make some sense of things with my colors.
