Jill Lear

Artists have long aspired to describe landscape and to translate the experience of a place through their art. Jill Lear is no exception to this desire. She begins with the assumption that a place is learned and known by looking. Through the systematic retelling of what she has witnessed, Lear is able to share not only the geometry and geography of place but also a passion for the act of looking.
While Lear makes paintings of trees, her influences—from her formalist training to poetry, mathematics and architecture—leak out into her work, lending it a complexity that requires time to fully appreciate. Her paintings are neither embedded in realism nor are they committed abstractions. Defining herself as a painter, she makes works that are more drawing and collage in their makeup. She is committed to her subject matter—particular trees in specific locations—and yet the images are more considerations of space, form and line than the trees’ specific details. It is precisely this complexity and ambiguity that makes the pieces so compelling.
Spontaneity within structure is written in pencil on a structural beam in Lear’s studio. Other notes and drawings, palettes of color and scraps of paper are tacked up in the studio, but this note s...

New York Studio School, NY NY
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
Chambre Syndicale of Haute Couture, Paris, France

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021
Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, TX

2019
Urban Sprawl, Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, TX

2018
Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, TX
Gilman Contemporary, Ketchum, ID
2017
Arbores Venerabiles, Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, TX
Spontaneity within Structure, Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX
Arbores Venerabiles, Gilman Contemporary, Ketchum, ID
2016 Texas Trees, Blue Print, Dallas, TX
2015 Witness Trees of Texas, Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX
2011
Space and Place, Friesen Gallery, Sun Valley, ID
Space and Place, Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX
2010 Friesen Gallery, 43° 40' 47" N 114° 21' 57" W, Sun Valley, ID
2009 Coordinates, Solo Show, Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX
2008 Paper, Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022
11 Women of Spirit. Zurcher Gallery, New York, NY

2021
Winter Exhibition, Gilman Contemporary, Sun Valley, ID
Elements of Nature, Slate Gallery, Sonoma, CA
2020
The Other Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA
2019
The Other Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA

2018
NJC: Works on Paper 2018, LBIF, Long Beach Island, NJ
Drawing From Perception VIII, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
2013 Leap, Bank of America Center, Houston, TX
2013 Drawing From Perception VII, Juried ...