My practice explores painting as an expanded field, using drawing, assemblage, textile, wax, resin, found materials, and artist-built supports to examine memory, vulnerability, and material transformation. Drawing is central to how I think and construct images, moving between gesture, surface, and object.
I think through making before I think through language. Painting offers a sense of freedom from the pressure to explain myself. Through repetition, layering, and material exploration, I enter a quieter space where understanding can emerge without the need for certainty. Rather than beginning with a fixed image or narrative, I allow the work to develop through intuition, experimentation, and response.
Drawn to materials that carry traces of previous lives, I explore how they can be preserved, obscured, gathered, and transformed. Through gestures of concealment, accumulation, and revision, the work becomes a space where memory and meaning remain fluid, allowing something unexpected to emerge.
Biography
Based in Chicago, Jenny Halpern received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her AAS in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design, and her BA in Visual Communications Design from Purdue University.
Jenny’s work has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine, Vol. 53, and exhibited at Rushwoman; Yes Project Space at Zhou B Art Center; NEIU Fine Arts Center Gallery; The Art Institute of Chicago; JULIUS CAESAR; Color Club; Hyde Park Art Center; Woman Made Gallery; CNL Projects; Latin School Gallery; Heaven Gallery; Noyes Cultural Arts Center; Parlour and Ramp; Ivory Gate Gallery; MIAR Art City; and the Chicago Cultural Center.
