"Red mushrooms on the forest floor" Painting

Jennifer Claire (Nickerson) Smith
(b.1960, New England, United States)
I create in watercolor, oils, acrylic, encaustic, cold wax and mixed media. By emphasizing aesthetics, I like to invite the viewer into my world, say hello, and compare experiences.

When I paint, I am putting emotions into view. It is important to me that the image describes mood the way music or poetry does. My creative process begins by playing and inventing, no longer struggling to follow the rules of reality. Sometimes the image comes first, something felt in color, shape, texture, mood. I develop the feelings as images, loosing myself in the flow. A good day can be like time traveling and often brings me to surreal fantasy landscapes.

When I view art, or listen to music or poetry that moves me, when there is an involuntary reach of hand to heart, then the mark has been hit. To me that is success. I have been an artist my whole life. In the last 20 years my work has been placed in private collections along the North East and Mid-Atlantic. I currently live and work in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.” (Georgia O'Keeffe)