The Chinese Zodiac 2020 Painting

Jennifer Michaela Byrne finds the essence of life… is color. And, as the world is so vastly rich with color, she is guided by the essence of her own inner life against the inflections and instruments of popular culture. For Jennifer Michaela the world presents itself as a kaleidoscope of color + form & scale. Color forms a language, influential and visceral. It is not humdrum nor commonplace, but an aesthetic intent for which to give value to. She believes in the power of color to transform how she sees the world and finds color as one of the most exciting components of practicing art. Form to her represents design, life and organic unity: order, sequence, movement and shape. The crescendo of color and form is scale, monumental or miniature, compelling the viewer to openly participate with the piece. The result is the art of its time and making art is creating the world. Within her project-based practice her pieces focus on themes and rhythms of life: the idea of home, family, music, nature and religion. In the rhythms of the day to day there is noise and in the noise there are vibrations and in those vibrations comes the passage of themes. Color is her preferred binding agent. Jennifer Michaela Byrne was born in Hong Kong, yet lived an American childhood in the Midwest. In her home as child, she passed by on a daily basis a Chinese mountainous landscape carved into a three-panel wooden floor-standing screen; in addition to another piece, consisting of an ink painting of persimmons floating on the picture plane of a silk canvas. She went on to pass by copious more Chinese screens and ink paintings into her adulthood only to admire their vastness. Unbeknownst to her did she ever imagine she’d return to those artworks in her childhood home as inspiration. The aim of Jennifer Michaela Byrne’s work has been to create paintings and sculptures with a persistent interest for the representation of imagery of not only her station in America, but her influences of the Far East through the use of symbolic imagery displayed in vivid pop colors.