Jennifer Webster was born in Chicago Illinois and spent most of her life living in the city and suburbs and Chicago. She considers her formative experiences of traveling out west, camping and exploring the mountains, canyons and desert, then returning to the lush Midwest as influential to her visions as an artist. This conflicting, super-imposition of vastly different landscapes, of the exterior and natural world as well as her interior psychological world, remains a central guiding force in her work.
Jennifer feels a strong alignment with the concerns of the Surrealists’ work, which are still relevant to our contemporary concerns – the political, the psycho/social, and spiritual, grappling with the sub-conscious, working within yet pushing against established systems. Metaphorically these Surrealist underpinnings are paradoxical…the necessary destruction before creation, beauty in ugliness, the pain in pleasure, the endings which give way to new beginnings. She aspires to create paintings that feel strangely familiar, or that show the familiar to be be quite strange.
Typically she begins her paintings with photographic references., derived from her environment. These landscapes are sketched onto the surface of the painting. Designed, graphic elements derived from patterned brick mid-century modern privacy screens, enter in to these conjurings. Eventually the catastrophic mark occurs, aka the “mistake”, which may include drips and stains, which are often incorporated into the work, referring to psychological and physical residue, the fluidity of memories and emotions, chaos and flow. Patterns, geometry, designed elements, provide a counter element of designed structure, hence, “the rub” in these landscapes. The juxtaposition of the natural world with designed patterns speak to chaos and order, structure and flow, design and nature.
Cumulatively these elements evoke a magical realism that work together and against each other to evoke patterns in human nature, life-cycles, psycho-logical/emotional states, memory and the creative process. They are both literal and figural “interiors” having psychological, social, metaphysical, and spiritual layers. Images and painting qualities collide, and often conflict. Distinctions are blurred between the natural plant and animal world, the manufactured and designed/architectural world, and the accidental. An untethered-ness, a sense of being unmoored in the inter-twining, folding, and undulating imagery speaks to the condition of our time.
Jennifer sees her work as a part of the collective consciousness, one of many Janus heads gazing back to the past, nodding to her art-historical ancestors, and pulling them with her into the present moment, creating new meaning, new ways of seeing. Focused very much on the present while working, her brush is her arrow, pointing the way to a new paradigm of the future.
Curriculum Vitae
B. 1971 Chicago, Il
Lives and works in Union Pier, MI
EDUCATION
Masters of Fine Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2018
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Graphic Design, Minor in Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009, 1991-95
HGK Hochschule Für Gestaltung und Kunst, Luzern, Switzerland, 2008
Rome Summer Program in Studio Arts and Art History, “Site-ing the Wall”, University of Illinois Chicago, 1997
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
GOODS & HEROES Three Oaks, MI
Lipman Hearne Chicago, IL, 2011
Cliff Dwellers Club Chicago, IL, 2011
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
HANKY PANKY, 5th Annual River North Design Destrict Gallery Walk
210 DesignHouse, with Ruthie Alan designs 2019
As We Recompose, Gallery 400, UIC, 2018
Open Studio, Great Space, University of Illinois at Chicago
Curated by January Parkos Arnall, 2018
Open Studio, Great Space, University of Illinois at Chicago
Curated by Michael Darling, 2017
The Art of Design, Susan Fredman Design Group, Chicago, IL, 2013
Botanic/Organic, Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, IL, 2012
AIR Artist’s in Residency Show, The Cliff Dwellers Club, Chicago, IL, 2004
27th Annual Alice and Arthur Baer Art Exhibition
Beverly Arts Club, Chicago, IL, 2003
On Your Mark 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1998
Converging Boundaries, Gallery 400, Chicago, IL, 1997
Site-ing The Wall, University of Washington Residency Studio
Palazzo Pio, Rome Italy, 1997
On-Longing, Chastain-Zollinger, Chicago, IL, 1996
Blurred Boundaries, Evie Camp Loft, Chicago, IL, 1995
Benefit for Harbor Home, Cairo, Chicago, IL, 1993
Re-Meaning, New Works Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1992
RESIDENCIES
AIR, The Cliff Dwellers Club, Chicago, IL, 2004
AWARDS & HONORS
UIC Art Department Scholarship 2016-18
UIC Faculty Selection for Graphic Design in Luzern Switzerland Program, HGK Hochschule fur Gestaltung und Kunst, Luzern, CH, 2007
27th Annual Alice and Arthur Baer Competition Exhibition monetary award, 2003
Koppe Family Memorial Scholarship for Studio Artist, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1993
Koppe Family Memorial Prize for Studio Artist, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1993
TEACHING
Instructor, Teaching Fellowship, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2017 - 2018
“She is like a cat in the dark…and then she is the darkness.” – Fleetwood Mac, Rhiannon