Tag: landscape

on process and discovery

Paintings in progress
Three works in progress in the studio

I’ve been working on a new group of paintings. The work feels good, which is actually scary because this makes it harder to progress in the paintings. It’s easier to work on a painting when it doesn’t feel right and when things obviously need to be corrected.

Part of the process for me is figuring out the painting as I go. I don’t have a particular image in mind when I’m working, so the process is a kind of searching for the image. As the painting progresses, I slowly discover the painting – a kind of adventure!

To summarize my painting process:

  • Starting (doing something to activate the white of the blank canvas)
  • Making some decisions for what the initial composition will be (breaking up the pictorial space into shapes using color and line)
  • Every layer after that is a series of edits until something gels. This can include combining smaller shapes into bigger ones, changing colors by covering up opaquely or transparently or pulling paint through wet underlayers, making new shapes, changes edges of shapes by accentuating or softening them or outlining them for example…

Over the years, I’ve tried to combine some of the different ideas I explore in my work: geometric abstraction such as my little watercolor squares, plants and the landscape, and a stacking of shapes like these paintings:

In the new group of paintings I feel like I’m getting some traction combining these ideas. The work feels decisive and allows me to work both from life and with abstraction – which is satisfying. I start the paintings looking at a landscape or still life (a house plant in this case) as a reference. I block out a composition in one color – usually a hot pink because I enjoy the dissonance it creates with the colors in the finished painting. Using that first start as a sort of map, I decide what to outline or fill in with color. From there, each layer changes according to what the painting needs and I follow the process I outlined above.

I’m excited to be making these and am curious to see where the work goes as I progress in the series…

If you’d like to be the first to know when this work becomes available, sign up for my emails here.

Two years in the making of a painting collection

Two years in the making of a painting collection… What started this body of work was a question I asked on Facebook: What outdoor spaces bring you peace and happiness? Friends sent me photos of their special landscapes, and I used those images as a jumping off point to create these paintings.

In this series of landscapes the feel of wide open spaces meets a soft geometry – a meditative play of shapes and colors.

Explore the paintings in the Searching in the wind collection HERE.

“I must love you very much” opening at SECCA September 2019

It’s my pleasure to announce that my first solo museum show opens at SECCA in Winston-Salem next month. Read on for the press release with all the juicy details…

Jessica Singerman, “Unhearable Sounds,” 2019, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches

 

(August 20, 2019, Winston-Salem, NC) Award-winning painter Jessica Singerman announces her exhibit of paintings entitled I MUST LOVE YOU VERY MUCH, opening at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) on September 17 and continuing through October 13. The opening reception takes place on Thursday September 19, from 6:00-8:00 PM, with an artist talk at 7:00 PM. Artwork will be available for purchase.

In Singerman’s monumental paintings, layered shapes meet muscular paint handling and a bold use of color to evoke a vast landscape and memories of time spent in the outdoors.

Says Singerman of these paintings, “There’s a line from a Mary Oliver poem that goes “If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.” Her writing cuts to the essential about what matters and what I hope to share in my work. It feels especially poignant these days – our world feels crazy and I’m afraid to lose the lands I love so much. One of my favorite such places is Pilot Mountain State Park. It inspires my work with its beauty as it overlooks the landscape surrounding it. This group of paintings came from time I spent hiking there with my family – views from the trail-side and of a pastoral landscape – not wild, but full of a vast energy nonetheless.

Mary Oliver’s writing encapsulates something essential about the human condition and about our experience in nature. If my paintings could speak, I like to think Mary’s poetry is how they would speak. Or rather, I hope that my paintings get close to the kind of transcendence of her poetry. Marks and color that transcend being and take the viewer to another place – a memory perhaps – and spur them to reflect on what it means to be human and on our relationship to nature. In any case, “if you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”

Arts writer Michael Solender wrote in the Charlotte Observer, “Singerman’s approach to her work and her outlook on life brings a broad perspective as a product of a bicultural upbringing. Her mother is French and her father is American.(…) Her work offers explosions of color, form and light conjuring imagery of motion and depth.”

About the artist: A resident of North Carolina since 1980, Jessica Singerman lived alternatively in France and the United States during her early life. Singerman earned her BA with Highest Honors in 2002 from the College of William & Mary, Virginia, and her Masters of Fine Arts in 2004 from the University of Delaware while on a fellowship. Her watercolors are the subject of a book published in 2017, Little Watercolor Squares, and her award-winning paintings and drawings are exhibited and collected internationally. Singerman lives and works in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For more information visit www.jessicasingerman.com.

SOUTHEASTERN CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, including I MUST LOVE YOU VERY MUCH, by Jessica Singerman, September 17 – October 13. Opening reception Thursday September 19, 6:00-8:00 PM, and artist talk at 7:00 PM.
750 Marguerite Dr, Winston-Salem, NC 27106, www.secca.org, 336.725.1904

For more information contact:
Jessica Singerman, (336) 283-0185
create@jessicasingerman.com

Pennsylvania Dutch Country Paintings

I spent a week in July in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Each morning, I woke up early and painted the landscape of fields, farmland, forests, earth, and sky.

Although you may be more familiar with my abstract work, painting and drawing from life are an important part of my practice as an artist. Observing the effects of light on color and shape, and translating that into paint keeps my eyes and hand sharp. These images work themselves into my abstract pieces as well – a memory of a particular color or shadow or shape – all these elements play into my abstract paintings.

Each 7.5 x 10.75 inch painting is oil on wood panel and is available for $550 including shipping to the US. $650 includes shipping anywhere else in the world.

If you’d like to purchase one of these paintings for your collection or to share with a friend, click on the images below to visit the gallery shop.

“Wednesday Morning, Valley Road”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018 – This painting is SOLD
“Tuesday Morning, Roush Road”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018
“Thursday Morning, Beagle Road”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018
“Sunday Morning, Beagle Road”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018
“Monday Morning, Roush Road”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018
“Saturday Morning, Meadow Lane”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018
“Friday Morning, Deodate and Old Hershey”, oil on wood panel, 7.5 x 10.75 inches, 2018

Paintings exhibited at Mooresville Arts

Three of my paintings were just accepted into the Mooresville Arts Guild Winter Juried Exhibit. The show will be up January 23-February 27, 2015. Opening reception is Friday January 23rd, 6:00-8:00PM. Hope to see you there!

Mooresville Arts: 103 W Center Ave Mooresville NC 28115 (704) 663-6661 www.magart.org

TheFieldYouThinkYouOwn
The Field You Think You Own, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, 2014
Speak to Anything But the Sky, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2014
Speak to Anything But the Sky, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2014
Back of the Hand to Everything, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2014
Back of the Hand to Everything, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2014
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