Jenn Shifflet

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Regard this fleeting world like this: Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn, like bubbles on a fast moving stream, like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass, like a candle flickering in a s strong wind, echoes, mirages and phantoms, hallucinations, and like a dream.” The eight similes of Illusion from the Prajna Paramita Sutras- The Buddha

This particular body of work reflects my interest in the inner dreamlike realms of perception, and the formal qualities of light, color, space and form. I am drawn to the space between the ethereal and the underlying geometric structure of all living things. My paintings intend to rest in this pause between movement and stillness, emergence and dissolution, fluidity and form. Time is an important element, as each painting is slowly built up of many thin mostly transparent glazes that eventually create deeply saturated color, luminosity and an expanded sense of space. The sculptural pieces consider the inevitable transformative cycle of regeneration as found in the natural world, and the inner facets of perception and insight symbolically represented as light from within.  Ultimately I am interested in a visual language that points to how the beauty of life is held within a profound fragility of impermanence.

This work arises out of my ongoing interests in Buddhist philosophy and practice, sacred geometry, my earlier background as a jeweler, the warp and weft of textiles, color, light and its refraction. While embodying a symbolic relationship to the natural world, my work intends to remain ambivalent in its reference to a particular time or place, encouraging personal resonance or familiarity. I work intuitively, trusting an embodied aesthetic where the external mirrors an internal sense, discovering spaces of refuge in which to rest and contemplate.

Jenn Shifflet resume 2015.pdf