Jill McLennan

Artist Statement:

My new series combines my observations of daily life in Oakland, my personal experience combined with my documentation of the people, the buildings, the traffic; the pleasure, the pain, the beauty, the dilapidation; the construction, the destruction, the dilapidation, the restoration.  As a documenter, I record, as an educator and an activist I communicate and as an artist I translate and decode information into descriptive images.  This exhibition represents my process, my figuring things out.  It is only the beginning, I am still deeply searching for the questions, the conundrums that keep us going.  Striving for the whys and the hows in this complicated world of colliding and collaborating cultures, natures and futures.  

This is our city and we can beautify it or leave it to deteriorate and I will continue to observe and live within this dichotomy.  As an artist and an educator I strive to make a more beautiful vision for the world and the future through the language of visual art.  In painting studio canvases and murals and in guiding children to do the same, we can portray hope and sunlight where it is needed most within ourselves and our cities.

At Hampshire College in Massachusetts, I was taught to examine details, measure angles and match colors and light on objects. I had the natural gifts of sensitivity to detail, a strong memory for visual information and a developed skill in drawing.  Painting with oils took practice, time, trial and error to perfect.  In graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago I studied Art Education and continued my painting pursuits.  I began to interpret my urban environment while learning about the life experiences of the Chicago youth.  Teaching, living and working in Chicago gave me the hands on experience I needed to bring deeper meaning to my observations.

In the Bay Area, I am immersed in the city, surrounded by the beauty of nature and the destruction and progress of industry and technology.  I take in the experiences of my students, friends and neighbors to depict our common surroundings in my own visual language.  I emphasize the natural features enhanced by sunlight surrounding the buildings and roadways that humans have created.  I find myself focusing on construction sites as a message about how we transform the environment to fit our needs.  Graffiti is another method humans have found to claim the abandoned urban decay and call it our own again.

This is our city and we can beautify it or leave it to deteriorate and I will continue to observe and live within this dichotomy.  As an artist and an educator I strive to make a more beautiful vision for the world and the future through the language of visual art.  In painting studio canvases and murals and in guiding children to do the same, we can portray hope and sunlight where it is needed most within ourselves and our cities.