Negative Space I Painting

Jennifer Whitten, an American artist, immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 2009. At the start of her career, her fastidious, highly skilled manner of working seemed well suited for medical illustration, but Jennifer quickly abandoned medical studies in pursuit of her own artistic investigations. For years, her photorealistic paintings have navigated the aestheticisation of absence and autobiographical nostalgia; and most recently, after an encounter in Italy with a collection of 18th century reverse-glass paintings, she determined that glass would serve as an ideal conduit of these themes. Oil, reverse-glass and representational painting have lengthy histories, but Jennifer’s edgy recontextualisation of these methods upends any hint of the conventional. Incorporating everything from steel, to video, to live music, her complex installations defy the traditional 2D confines set for painting, but preserve its seduction and sincerity. In 2015, Jennifer completed her Masters in Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. She was the recipient of the Athenaeum Club Visual Arts Research Award, the University’s most prestigious honor, worth $15,000. Jennifer is also a proud tenant of the Abbotsford Convent, the largest arts precinct in Australia.