Interview with Jennifer Pazienza

The daughter of Italian immigrants, Jennifer Pazienza born in Newark, New Jersey, began making art as a child in her mother’s kitchen. She earned a Bachelor of Art Education at the William Paterson College of New Jersey and completed a Master of Art Education in 1985, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Art Education in 1989 at the Pennsylvania State University. Retired art education professor from the University of New Brunswick, 1989-2014, she delights in being a full time painter! July 2019 sees her celebrating 30 years in Canada. The last 26 years painting from her beloved Keswick Ridge, New Brunswick. It was her painting professor, noted Afro-Native American landscape painter Richard Mayhew, who in 1984 suggested she ditch her tube of Payne’s Gray and switch to a colourist approach. She has been exploring the possibilities of a limited colourist palette ever since. 

The creative interplay of painting and exhibiting, research, writing and teaching characterize her career. Jennifer has given scholarly papers on art, education and pedagogy at conferences in Canada, the US and Europe, has worked as a visual arts consultant at the Getty Centre for the Arts in Education, the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan, and Canada. All while maintaining a studio and exhibition practice, beginning with her first UNB solo show, Between the Lines in 1994. Her UNB 2010, Landscape, Love & Longing exhibition with its catalogue essay by Tom Smart traveled the province, Maine and Massachusetts. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses. She was a founding member of UNB’s Renaissance College. Jennifer has published articles in newspapers and magazines, educational journals, and chapters in books. Her work has twice been juried into Studio Visit Magazine. She has served as critic, referee and juror for other scholars' and artists' works. Most recently as juror for the City of Fredericton’s two nation wide public art commissions and UNB’s Art in New Spaces program. With today’s access to social media she regularly consults and advises emerging artists from Minnesota to New Delhi. 

It was during her 2007 BAG artist residency, Bella Figura that Jennifer began writing about art, mindfulness and poetics of space. It was September 2015 when she had the honour of delivering the product of that inquiry, Beautiful Dreamer: Landscape and Memory during the closing plenary session of the international congress on Jungian studies at, Art & Psyche: Layers and Liminality in the land of her maternal heritage, Syracuse, Sicily, It was published in ARAS Connections: Image and Archetype 2016 Issue 3, https://aras.org/newsletters/aras-connections-image-and-archetype-2016-issue-3

With her husband Gerry Clarke she began putting down roots in Sicily in 1998 when they first traveled to Azienda Agricola Alcalà near Catania. They remained there four months with their two dogs. In the dozen or more sojourns to Sicily, they return to that same agriturismo, the home of the family of friends they have cultivated since. In 2002, Jenn had an artist residency exploring majolica ceramics at Artigianato del Sole in Misterbianco. That led to her first Alcalà commission, of un pannello consisting of 54, eight-inch hand painted tiles that Jennifer made and installed with local artisans Alcalà. Two murals adorn the masseria, the farm’s main building. One from 2007 acknowledges, gli agrumi, citrus agriculture and the majolica ceramic colours of that region. The other weds the Sicilian and Ukrainian landscapes of their friend’s son and daughter in law in 2018. 

In March of 2019, one of about 90 artists, Jennifer’s Over the Pond Suite, four eight-inch square oil paintings received an excellence award at the Little Treasures Exhibition in Bologna, curated by Paola Trevisan. In October of 2019, Jennifer’s work was included in the Marion McCain Exhibition of Contemporary Atlantic Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. 

To gain insight into the life and work of Jennifer Pazienza, please visit her website, www.jeniferpazienza.com.

From their you can visit her artist video, Beautiful Dreamer: Landscape and the Poetics of Place, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb9WOTpLfI4 that she made as an archive for her family, that she premiered during Miami Art Week in December, 2018 as part of her exhibition. 

Jennifer Pazienza’s work is held in Public, Private and Corporate Collections in Canada, the US, the UK and Italy. 

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us how you started in the arts? and your first experience in art making?

My appetite for the joys and responsibilities of living an aesthetic life, I owe to my short-lived life with my mom. She died 55 years ago this September. I was nine. She had the gift for making the ordinary, extraordinary. To me, "please, please, can I take ballet and piano lessons", she would gently say, "we'll see." Then she would tear open a large brown grocery store bag and tell me to draw! and draw, and paint I did. Usually at our Italian-American New Jersey kitchen table where at the stove she would be using the same kind of bag to drain the eggplant she was frying. The dull brown paper transformed into glistening hues of Umber, Sienna and Ochre. The flour, egg and fresh breadcrumb coating insured a crispy crunch that would give way to creamy melanzane interiors developing in me a taste for contrasting colours and textures, sights and smells, sounds too.

How would you describe yourself and your artwork?

In a world where images arrive in the palms of our hands in nanoseconds and supersized art installations challenge market economies, and political landscapes, as polluted as the earth, air and water, threaten the survival of everyone and everything I maintain an old-fashioned affair with paint.  Oil paint.

A student of the ephemeral; of truth and beauty, of light and space I paint to remember, to belong, to understand—to breathe. In the liminal space between representation and abstraction, memory magnifies my quest for meaning that together with love, longing, and the fluidity of time shape the figurative landscapes I make.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Life on Keswick Ridge with my husband and our dogs is the fundamental source of inspiration in my work. Colour, light, and air, the majesty and vulnerability of trees, and the inexorable return of the seasons. Books. Poems. Politics. Food, philosophy, flowers, friends and the art of others inspire me. As do landscape and memory, love and longing, and the quest to belong. The sheer act of painting and the overwhelming privilege I feel for being able to do this work.

What emotions do you hope the viewers experience when looking at your art?

I don't have hopes about emotions or thoughts that viewers may have. What I have is one fundamental wish, and that is for viewers to look. I mean really look, with hearts, as well as eyes, with their whole selves.  Like poet Ted Hughes, my dream is that viewers approach my paintings with the cooperative, imaginative attitude of a co-author, to enter into as deeply as possible my imaginative worlds. 

When do you know that an artwork is finished ?

For me, a painting is finished when like any compelling conversation neither party has anything more to say and a satisfying silence takes over.

What has been the most exciting moment in your art career so far?

Sorry, I don't have just one!

How long does it take to produce one work?

Depends. One hour, one year. All the years of my life.

What exciting projects are you working on right now?

For a short time in my career I worked in hot glass. I will be returning to that medium on collaboration with New Brunswick glass artist, Curtis Dionne for a 2021 exhibition at the Moncton Gallery in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Do you have any upcoming events or exhibitions we should know about?

Embracing the Square: Love Poems From the Ridge is a solo show that opens November 2020 at the historic Moncton Capitol Theatre Art Gallery in Moncton, New Brunswick. I'm working with an incredible artist and curator, Paul Bourque.

Website: https://www.jenniferpazienza.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferpazienza/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferpazienzaartstudio/