Artist Spotlight - Jean Cherouny — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

Jean’s Cherouny’s earliest art lessons as a child inspired her interest in color. She became curious about painting with wheels-yes her rollerblades as a way of body painting. Her love of moving led Jean to skiing competitively on a national level and then her invention of Active Expressionism painting while moving across the canvas with paint on her rollerblades.

Aster, 2021, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 50x 80 cm

Jean feels like nature while moving on the canvas and thinks of a spider in her process. The wheel helps her glide the paint onto the surface with freedom. The drawn quality of her textures and art allows her to obsess over simple forms made on canvas including stripes reminiscent of Sean Scully and Jasper Johns, She admires female painters such as Joan Mitchell and Rebecca Purdum who painted with her hands.

Reaching Blue, 2022, acrylic on wood, 15x15cm

Jean graduated from the University of Vermont in Art Education (1991) Magna Cum Laude, and went on to pursue her MFA degree, graduating from Johnson State College in 2010. She now paints and lives in Aruba inspired by the nature and the culture of people with a rich Caribbean history.

Untitled,2024, acrylic and gouache on canvas, 50x40cm

Artist Statement

Jean Cherouny paints with her rollerblades to create original, layered, texture paintings with spiraling forms that express her kinetic nature with paint. While earning her Art Education degree she discovered this technique to utilize her athleticism, from a competitive skiing career, to allow her feet to express the energy she experiences through eye, mind and body.

Untitled, 2024, acrylic and gouache on paper, 11x11cm

Jean’s Active Expressionism is inspired by nature’s chaos and order manifested by layers of color and texture. The rhythm of her rollerblade wheels roll paint into dynamic, colorfully inspired images. She uses a menagerie of wheeled tools to detail her work which work into multidirectional brush strokes.

As the wheels transport her paint the floor like Jackson Pollock gives her the inspiration she needs for her to push against the surface. A fast process of putting the paints together gives way to bold, childlike compositions that are made with the speed of graffiti. Jean’s kinetic energy is a force to reclaim past traumas giving way to joyful color.

IG: jean_cherouny
Website: jeancherounyfineart.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jcherouny
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