Location: Canada
The daughter of Italian immigrants, Jennifer Pazienza was born in Newark, New Jersey. She began making art as a child in her mother’s kitchen. Recently retired art education professor from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, Dr. Pazienza, after years of navigating the demands of university work delights in being a full time painter! With her husband Gerry Clarke and their dog Mela, Becket is her home away from home. Jennifer has been exhibiting work in the Berkshires since 2014 with a solo show at Good Purpose Gallery, Lee, Massachusetts and group shows at St. Francis Gallery, Lee, Massachusetts and 510 Warren Street Gallery Hudson, New York. She regularly writes a column for The Artful Mind and has been featured in two significant interviews (Issues, November 2014 and September 2015).
Pazienza earned a Bachelor of Education in art education at the then William Paterson College of New Jersey, a Master of Education in 1985 and a Doctor of Philosophy in1989 in art education with minors in painting from the Pennsylvania State University. It was her painting professor, Afro-Native American Landscape painter Richard Mayhew, had the greatest influence on her artwork. In 1984 he suggested she ditch her tube of Payne’s Gray and tonal painting and switch to a colourist approach. She has been exploring the possibilities of a limited colourist palette ever since.
Jennifer has given scholarly papers on art, education and pedagogy at conferences in Canada, the US and Europe, has worked as a visual arts research consultant at the Getty Centre for the Arts in Education in the US, the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan, and Canada. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses, published articles and chapters in books while maintaining a studio and exhibition practice. In September 2015 she delivered Beautiful Dreamer: Landscape and Memory at Art & Psyche Sicily, an international conference dedicated to the life and work of Carl Jung for the closing plenary session. It was selected for publication on ARAS Connections: Image and Archetype 2016 Issue 3, https://aras.org/newsletters/aras-connections-image-and-archetype-2016-issue-3 and will be published in Italian for the Southern Italian Psychological Institute’s journal, Enkelados, the Journal of Analytic Psychology. She was awarded artist residencies at the Beaverbrook, New Brunswick’s Provincial Art Gallery and Artigianato del Sole in Misterbianco, Sicily.
Jennifer Pazienza’s work is held in Public, Private and Corporate Collections in the US, Canada, UK and Italy. Website: http://jenniferpazienza.com/
Email: jennpazienza@gmail.com
An old fashion love of paint in an age of handheld images available in nano seconds. Landscape, love, longing and memory are constant themes in my work. So too the joys and challenges of a limited colourist pallete, the tensions between representation and abstraction, matter and spirit.
oil on canvas, 96 x 72 inches
oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
oil on canvas
72 x 54 inches
oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches
oil on canvas, 72 x 54 inches
The carrots, beets and turnips depicted here were harvested (and eventually cooked and eaten) from our organic farm, https://www.facebook.com/JemsegRiver/ Jemseg River Farm. Despite my urban roots, since childhood the stuff of the natural world, recast as landscape, has been my go to place for personal and social understanding.
When I am asked, “Were you thinking about all of this when you made these root veggie paintings?” my answer is always a resounding, “No!” I had just completed a commissioned painting. Although it was an unexpected aesthetic and spiritually rich learning experience it was also soulless—an experience that took me away from myself, I was left feeling bereft. Without thinking I asked my husband to grab a bunch of carrots and beets so that I could get back to my palette. It was only on reflection that I realized my off handed request for root vegetables were not just about colour, but colour as a way for me to get back to myself, a way to heal. These works exude good health and celebrate the miracles that root vegetables are, but they remind us too that the health of the environment resides in each of our hands.
“Bramosia”
“Biancospini”
“Summer Skies”
“Giallo”
“Early Winter, Redoux”
“Early Spring”
“Winter Sky 1”
“Late Summer”
“Winter Evening”
“Scuro”
“Modern Hybrids”
“After the Rain”
“Roots in the Wind”
“Un-Earthed”
“Root & Rutabagas”
“Mela's Carrots & Beets”
“Nelsons & Rainbows”
“Early Wonder High Tops”
