SEPTEMBER 8 - 30TH
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 8th, 5 - 8pm / Art Talk from 7 - 8pm
For Immediate Release:
Friday, September 8th, 5 - 8pmJean Pettigrew Whelan - Solo Exhibition, "And Now I Find Myself"
With live jazz by G.S. Young from 5 - 7pm
Art Talk with JP Whelan, 7 - 8pm
Contact: Amanda Paoletti, Owner/Director for additional images and info!
Artists' Studio in the Foothills (ASiF)
Visual Arts Center of Nevada County
940 Idaho Maryland Road, Grass Valley, CA 95945
530-274-7000 or 530-210-3162
www.asifstudios.com
For JPG images, please email: amandapaoletti.asif@gmail.com
On Friday, September 8th from 5 - 8pm the Artists' Studio in the Foothills (ASiF) is thrilled to announce the opening reception for its 2023 Visiting Artist Exhibition featuring San Francisco artist, Jean Pettigrew Whelan. ASiF invites the public to celebrate the event with wine, refreshments and a live jazz performance by G.S. Young from 5 - 7pm, followed by a sit down - art talk with Whelan in the center's main gallery from 7 - 8pm. The gallery is open Saturdays from 11am - 4pm or by appointment. Whelan's show will exhibit through September 30th.
Jean Pettigrew Whelan's 2023 exhibit entitled, And Now I Find Myself, includes a range of two dimensional works in various media, from figurative to landscape to studio still lifes. Her series of figurative works are intuitive and gestural, using the human form as templates with layered abstracted imagery - her landscapes are primitive and sensory, while the studio still lifes are a series depicting the artist’s renderings of carefully curated objects. The uniqueness of these come in the form of a stack of books, a tidy pile of patterned tablecloths - a flag, a skull, a theatrical mask balancing on a stool or a stack of milk crates. This still life series of beloved objects, referred to by Whelan as "intimate spaces and objects of affection", feel deeply personal in their carrying of cultural meanings and curious connections. Her landscape series depict meditations of wild amorphous islands in percussive textural fields, while the abstract figurative works use simple yet beautifully descriptive lines with disconnected contours in luscious color to describe what could be a synaptic dance. What comes through in all of the work is the artist's deep, unsuppressed and unselfconscious curiosity of self and the world, inspired by its poetry, literature, art, history and spirituality.
Whelan describes her work as an exploration of interior spaces, the corporeal-physical body, the metaphysical, ontological, the liminal space, the imaginative space and real space - spiritual dimension, the ethereal - doors to known, doors to unknown - paintings are the doors. "I don’t always know where I’m going as I find my way into my work, and I have literally painted myself out of corners. Delight in discovering a solution in a painting or in noticing a particular moment of beauty and revealing it is what I am after. I am open to energy, emotion, the unexpected. I trust inspiration and I run with it. Even the grotesque can be coaxed into something beautiful."
Jean Pettigrew Whelan was born in Palo Alto in 1968, earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 and an MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004. She has taught and exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay area including a number of works at the deYoung Open Exhibition. She has raised a family and maintains a studio practice at her home in San Francisco. Visit Whelan's website at paintcooklove.com for more information and to view her artwork.
GENERAL INFO ABOUT ASiF - A VISUAL ARTS COMMUNITY RESOURCE:
The Artists' Studio in the Foothills (ASiF), a 4000 square foot - fully equipped studio art center which opened its doors in 2008, offering classes and workshops in a variety of media for all ages, private and shared studio space for working artists, and a gallery to promote local and visiting artists. ASiF's mission is to nurture the creative spirit of the community, providing a place where are can be made, displayed and appreciated, creating opportunities for professional artists to support themselves through making, selling and teaching art.
ASiF is home to more than 15 studio artists and instructors, offering classes for adults and children in drawing, painting, printmaking, pottery, sculpture fiber-arts and more!
The Artists' Studio in the Foothills (ASiF) is located at 940 Idaho Maryland Road, in Grass Valley. The gallery is open on Saturdays from 11am - 4pm or by appointment. For more information go to www.asifstudios.com or call 530-274-7000.
Know & Go:
Who: Jean Pettigrew Whelan
What: Opening Reception for her Solo Exhibition & an Art Talk
Where: 940 Idaho Maryland Road, Grass Valley, CA 95959
When: Friday, Sept 8th, 5-8pm (Art Talk from 7-8pm)
Contact: Amanda Paoletti 530/210-3162 amandapaoletti.asif@gmail.com
I don’t always know where I’m going as I find my way into my work, and I have literally painted myself out of corners. Delight in discovering a solution in a painting or in noticing a particular moment of beauty and revealing it is what I am after. I am open to energy, emotion, the unexpected. I trust inspiration and I run with it. Even the grotesque can be coaxed into something beautiful.
Working in a variety of media and on a few series’ concurrently, I have time to pause and reflect between projects. Each of these projects has its own momentum and making different kinds of work helps me to propel myself forward. Perhaps it was motherhood where I learned the beauty of multitasking?
“Currently I am working on a series of large abstract and figurative oil paintings, a series of imaginary landscapes (based on an uninhabited island in the Inland Sea in Japan) in oil paint, stacks of books in acrylic on canvas, sumi Ink drawings, and gouache on paper. In the gouache pieces and in the abstract oil paintings’, I have been making and using stencils. These have taken on a life of their own and have ended up as collages. Recently, I made a film with footage from my time at a residency in Wexford Ireland last March. Each of these different series and mediums informs each other. As Gerhardt Richter said, “I like continual uncertainty.”
ASiF gallery is open Saturdays, from 11am - 4pm or by appointment. This show will exhibit through September 30th.
