Bio
Jen Hitchings (1988, New Jersey) received her BFA in Painting & Drawing from SUNY Purchase College in 2011 and a certificate in Small Business & Entrepreneurship from CUNY Hunter College in 2018. She has attended residencies at Adventure Painting (Yellowstone National Park), DNA (Provincetown, MA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan), and Highly Authorized (Ellenville, NY). Solo presentations of her work have taken place at Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, CA) in 2023, Taymour Grahne (London, UK) in 2023 and online in 2022, One River School (Englewood, NJ) in 2019, MEN Gallery (New York, NY) and PROTO (Hoboken, NJ) in 2018, and Ideal Glass (New York, NY) in 2017 which was accompanied by a 16 x 30’ outdoor mural. In 2021, she completed two large-scale outdoor murals at The Wassaic Project, on view through 2023. In 2023, she was commissioned by Mailchimp to produce a 9 x 21’ indoor permanent office mural at their new headquarters in Atlanta, GA, along with 39 other contemporary painters. Recent group exhibitions have taken place at Richard Heller, Anat Ebgi, Good Mother (Los Angeles), Kutlesa (Goldau, Switzerland), Chen Projects at Louisa Art Center (Taipei, Taiwan), Taymour Grahne (London, UK), Ana Mas Projects (Barcelona, Spain), Gaa Gallery, Cindy Rucker, Pierogi (New York, NY), and The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) among others. She was a recipient of the Queens Council on the Arts’ New Works Grant in 2018. She lives and works in Burbank, CA and her work is represented by Taymour Grahne in the UK.
Statement
Through symbolic imagery and psychedelic color, my paintings depict the tenuous and historically mythological relationship between humankind and nature. I investigate the psyche, erotic desire, time, and cosmic forces, referencing the visual languages of Japanese folk art, Hudson River School painting, and spiritualist archetypes. Versions of cycles from the human and natural experience are rendered: lunar, solar, seasonal, menstrual, reproductive, atmospheric, and plant-life. The compositions convey oppositional, mirrored, or doubled elements, evoking uncanny symmetry. This combination results in fantastical scenes exuding specific seasons, times of day, temperatures, or moods. Referencing crude line sketches based loosely on places I’ve visited between the American northeast and southwest, I build the compositions using strategic proportions and sacred geometries. Color is methodically applied, removed, thinly stained, or thickly painted in contoured waves–all by hand with no tape or tools–resulting in widely varied textures assigned to each element in my visual language. The images include multiple versions of iconographies–celestial bodies, suns and moons, mountain ranges, oddly reflective deserts, and cloned river paths. Stars are often arranged in either Western Zodiac constellation patterns, or as letters or words in various languages, reflecting my interest in linguistics, the evolution of communication, and the significance of signs and symbols in humankind’s endless desire to make meaning of our surroundings and existence. An admiration of and trust in nature to guide us is rekindled, and a delicate wavering between serenity and sorrow, isolation and unity emerges–two opposing forces meeting within a cycle.
Jen Hitchings (1988, New Jersey) received her BFA in Painting & Drawing from SUNY Purchase College in 2011 and a certificate in Small Business & Entrepreneurship from CUNY Hunter College in 2018. She has attended residencies at Adventure Painting (Yellowstone National Park), DNA (Provincetown, MA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan), and Highly Authorized (Ellenville, NY). Solo presentations of her work have taken place at Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, CA) in 2023, Taymour Grahne (London, UK) in 2023 and online in 2022, One River School (Englewood, NJ) in 2019, MEN Gallery (New York, NY) and PROTO (Hoboken, NJ) in 2018, and Ideal Glass (New York, NY) in 2017 which was accompanied by a 16 x 30’ outdoor mural. In 2021, she completed two large-scale outdoor murals at The Wassaic Project, on view through 2023. In 2023, she was commissioned by Mailchimp to produce a 9 x 21’ indoor permanent office mural at their new headquarters in Atlanta, GA, along with 39 other contemporary painters. Recent group exhibitions have taken place at Richard Heller, Anat Ebgi, Good Mother (Los Angeles), Kutlesa (Goldau, Switzerland), Chen Projects at Louisa Art Center (Taipei, Taiwan), Taymour Grahne (London, UK), Ana Mas Projects (Barcelona, Spain), Gaa Gallery, Cindy Rucker, Pierogi (New York, NY), and The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) among others. She was a recipient of the Queens Council on the Arts’ New Works Grant in 2018. She lives and works in Burbank, CA and her work is represented by Taymour Grahne in the UK.
Statement
Through symbolic imagery and psychedelic color, my paintings depict the tenuous and historically mythological relationship between humankind and nature. I investigate the psyche, erotic desire, time, and cosmic forces, referencing the visual languages of Japanese folk art, Hudson River School painting, and spiritualist archetypes. Versions of cycles from the human and natural experience are rendered: lunar, solar, seasonal, menstrual, reproductive, atmospheric, and plant-life. The compositions convey oppositional, mirrored, or doubled elements, evoking uncanny symmetry. This combination results in fantastical scenes exuding specific seasons, times of day, temperatures, or moods. Referencing crude line sketches based loosely on places I’ve visited between the American northeast and southwest, I build the compositions using strategic proportions and sacred geometries. Color is methodically applied, removed, thinly stained, or thickly painted in contoured waves–all by hand with no tape or tools–resulting in widely varied textures assigned to each element in my visual language. The images include multiple versions of iconographies–celestial bodies, suns and moons, mountain ranges, oddly reflective deserts, and cloned river paths. Stars are often arranged in either Western Zodiac constellation patterns, or as letters or words in various languages, reflecting my interest in linguistics, the evolution of communication, and the significance of signs and symbols in humankind’s endless desire to make meaning of our surroundings and existence. An admiration of and trust in nature to guide us is rekindled, and a delicate wavering between serenity and sorrow, isolation and unity emerges–two opposing forces meeting within a cycle.