Jennifer Presant

Artist’s Statement

With an artistic training in figurative realism and a background in graphic design, my paintings unite my interest in the psyche as expressed through the actual or implied presence of the human form and a personal graphic aesthetic. Thematically, my paintings address the complexity of memory, by blurring and questioning the lines between recollection, projection, and reality. Each painting becomes a psychological landscape or waking dream, examining the notion of “reality”. The shifting environments become a metaphor for the transience of our experience and the indelible impressions they leave in us.

I often use deconstructed depictions of a room – a white cube – as a starting point for my imagery. I transform the room by using projections of various places or figures on the walls, in essence creating a virtual extension of the space. By combining layers of images, I explore how a room can be transformed to create an experience that is multilayered and time-based for the viewer. The movement of the interiors and exteriors overlapping and shifting into one another is meant to mimic the real life experience of memory distorting and influencing the present.

The environments in my work all have personal significance for me and the artworks are typically an amalgamation of images and experiences from the past and present. The rooms and landscapes are places I have been at poignant moments in my life. In these images, there is a longing for times and places that are now gone.

When deciding which images to combine for a painting, I choose those that seem related either in subject, color or mood. I use architectural elements to frame and divide the spaces and line up horizons, and graphic elements. At first glance, I like the image to feel as if it existed exactly as I painted it. I search for that fine line between the strange and familiar, the logical and the incongruous, dreamlike yet plausible enough to engage the viewer and leave an open-ended narrative. A specific perspective is used to create a feeling of looking in at an intimate moment in people’s private lives. In a sense with media today and our obsession with pictorial documentation of events, we have even grown accustomed to watching ourselves from a voyeuristic standpoint. With these paintings, the viewer’s imagination and own experiences plays an important role in the piece, while also being implicated in the voyeurism depicted.