Apr 2

Jennifer Warren

Jennifer Warren is a contemporary figurative and interior painter who has exhibited across the United States, especially in the Chicago, Illinois metro area. Notable exhibitions include The Museum of Science and Industry, Silos Gallery, The Martin Gallery, and Sidney Larson Gallery. She has been featured on Saatchi Art multiple times including in premium collections such as 35 under 35, Best of Spring, and has participated in The Other Art Fair. Jennifer has an honoree award from Hirshhorn New York Gala, completed a residency at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn museum, and has received commissions from several states.

The subject matter usually focuses on women and interiors, however they sometimes deviate to portray vehicles, food, and architecture. With a bold color palette often using pastels and neutral gray tones, the paintings come off as smooth and refined revealing minimal brushwork. She often portrays her main subject or the focal paint just slightly off-center, creating a centrist and tight composition. Because the representation of interiors or architecture becomes so frequent in the works, there often remains a geometric layout to the paintings. Her depictions of shadows are often lush and painterly which help pop out the subject matter to feel increasingly alive.

The painting Avery (pictured above) depicts a curvy, Rubenesque woman with blue lipstick and eyeshadow accentuated by her attire of a sensual, revealing purple bathrobe. She is surrounded by large plants, an ornamental, brightly colored background, and a cowskin rug on the floor. The painting creates a brilliant composition of a perfect diamond starting from the triangular drapery over the cowskin, followed by the plants guiding the viewer’s eye to the right and left and then finally closing the diamond composition with the negative space of a giant fan on the wall. Avery anchors the surface of the painting with her perfect L-shaped pose. With high contrast, bright colors, feminine beauty, and a flawless composition, Avery clearly represents one of Jennifer’s best paintings.

Brent’s Drugs (pictured above) portrays a retro late-modernist interior of a diner. The diner appears similar to a Johnny Rockets layout with the black and white floor tiles and turquoise furniture. The attention to detail such as stacking many rows of booth seating in perfect perspective remains technically intimidating. The rich blues, whites, and grays almost create an interior with an oceanic aesthetic because of the water-like colors. An extremely well-illuminated setting with low contrast and minimal shadow, creating a pleasant surface followed by the dark windows in the receding background anchoring the focal point.

An overarching theme in the paintings convey the feeling of comfort; whether it may be the comfort of the home, comfortable bathrobes on females, or the portrayal of comfortable food settings such as burger shops, cafes, and diners. In almost half the paintings, there remains the artists’ affection for the portrayal of ferns perhaps creating a sense of warmth considering ferns are usually found in wet tropical environments.

Jennifer Warren remains a fairly young artist with lively, lush paintings, sophisticated color palette and complex compositional surfaces. Her paintings feel instinctual rather than concentrated or forced, as if breathing life onto the canvas. We will be following her work closely in the years ahead to see how such a promising artist evolves in her work and accomplishments. With warmth and boldness infused in the portfolio, Jennifer Warren creates dynamic art which helps define the purpose of image-making in the contemporary era.