My work is an exploration into the inner dream like experience of time, fleeting moments of perception, and reflections of the natural world. Ethereal and organic in nature, my paintings rest in the pause between movement and stillness, emergence and dissolution. I am interested in a visual language that speaks to how the ineffable beauty of life is held within a profound fragility of impermanence.

This particular series is based upon the concept of finding an internal state of refuge, which I think of as resting in the deepest parts of the inner sanctuary of ones’ being. Here, the outer world is metaphor for inner nature. As a child, I spent endless hours in the swath of forest behind my house, relishing a fantasy world of plant spirits, hidden realms of imagination, forts built into the creek bank, and the magic of light filtering through the trees as the day came to an end.  I still see the world in a similar way and this series is an attempt to share that perspective. Inspired by place, particularly the garden surrounding my studio, and Buddhist practice, these paintings reflect such dreamlike moments of stillness within the ever changing orchestration of light, color, growth patterns of the plants, movement in pools of water, and shifting daylight.

I see the painting process to be about discerning the balance between exercising control while finding freedom in letting go of preconceptions, so that intuition and chance may be the guide.  Inspired by photographic images I’ve taken in my garden, I create a luminous world of circles, drops, rains of light and abstracted botanical forms. Time is an important element in my work, as each painting is slowly built up of many thin transparent glazes that eventually create deeply saturated color, luminosity and an expanded sense of space.

While embodying a symbolic relationship to the natural world, my paintings intend to remain somewhat ambivalent in their reference to a particular time or place, allowing them to encourage the contemplative experience of personal resonance, recollection, or familiarity.

                     -Jenn Shifflet

Jenn Shifflet's resume.pdf