Jennifer Small

Jennifer Small, featured in both the Poetics of Space and Time Capsule exhibitions, is an abstract painter whose work is about elevating the everyday to express appreciation for the wonder of the ordinary. She is a Pennsylvania native who received her BFA in Painting and BS in Art Education from Millersville University and an MFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design.

She has exhibited her work in galleries and fairs in Philadelphia, Washington, DC, New York, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbus, Savannah, and Chicago. Media features have included Artist Talk Magazine, Art Seen Magazine, New American Paintings, Studio Visit Magazine, Studio Break Podcast, and Shockoe Artspeak Podcast. She now works as both a painter and visual designer in Wilmington, Delaware.


Artist Statement

My abstract paintings are a collage of my everyday, a compilation of my observed reality. They are about seeing, interpreting, and constructing new spaces derived from my experiences, straddling the line between representation and abstraction. I see daily routine as an opportunity to discover the wonder of banal environments. Whether I’m walking my dog around our neighborhood or exploring a new city, I am cataloging moments of aesthetic curiosity through photography. During this collection phase, I open myself up to chance encounters with engaging shapes, textures, patterns, and contrasts in real-life situations—a shadow being cast on the sidewalk, a tree branch overlapping the corner of a roof, power lines zig-zagging across a soft sunrise.

The recorded images are then cropped, simplified, multiplied, minimized, enlarged, and/or rotated through a process of drawing and collage to arrive at the elements in my paintings. Several elements from the same place and time are combined to build the abstract space in the painting. While my inspiration gathering is based on chance, my process of composing is structured and purposeful. I switch gears to make decisions about arranging my discoveries based on balance, hierarchy, unity, variety, and visual rhythm. My color palettes are either taken directly from the original photos, completely imagined, or a combination of the two. My process as a whole acts as a way for me to solidify memories about specific times and places, each painting becoming a journal entry about my movements on a given day.

My paintings meet at the intersection of unnoticed and poetic, personal and universal. I want to challenge the viewer to not only gain insights into my journey through the work, but also to consider slowing down to take in the visual grandness of their own seemingly mundane spaces.


https://www.jensmallart.com/