About

Artist Statement

As an artist, I believe it is my job to share my interpretation of this world and leave it with the memory of what I find beauty in. My childhood was filled with family trips to the Algonquin Highlands & Kill Bear where we would camp for weeks at a time. Growing up in this environment gave me an enormous curiosity and wonder for the natural world. I have always appreciated that nature makes us feel small. We forget about our societal norms, and our self consciousness slips away. Nature is constant and it doesn't need to be anything; it just is. I truly believe that Mother Nature is the teacher of confidence, because survival is necessary and does not need to be questioned. The challenge in modern life is having to push aside your instincts at times, and behave the way that society expects you to. This creates anxiety and and makes us question our natural intuition. We need a place to be wild things, and that is becoming harder to find as we build a culture of always worrying about everything. 

My works are informed by my life experiences. I've been persistent and independent my entire life, and it has lead me into some scary places at times. I've experienced unexpected losses and found myself in challenging situations that have come with years of healing. The artwork is often not thought out; it finds itself on the canvas as I move through the painting. The shapes and colours feel calming for me and I cannot help myself but find each component of a painting holding empty space around it. It is both visually peaceful and a reflection of my loneliness that I've built around me in the healing process.

Some of my works feel both beautiful and alarming, which is how I perceive the world. Like spotting an owl flying over you at dusk, it's a fleeting moment of seeing something that raises your heart rate because it's unusual and unexpected. The emotional connection comes from eliciting the viewer's heart. I believe that my work seeks both a stimulation response and a place of calm. This I feel is a more natural human experience which eliminates the overthinking and anxiety that our younger generations are suffering from. 

 

Biography

Jen Prior was born in Burlington, ON Canada. Growing up with her mom who is a world renowned watercolour realist, Jen has always been immersed in the art world and found her passion early. Her first group art show was at the age of 7 at her local library branch, featuring a colourful watercolour painting of a parakeet in front of a full sun, framed by winding tree foliage. From participating in her Mom's annual craft shows at their family home, to earning all her savings through realist portrait commissions and painting backdrops for a local photographer throughout high school, Jen was eager to put her creative work in front of the world. Her work really developed in her fourth year in Sheridan's BAA Illustration program. During her college years, she was featured in several group shows in Toronto as well as a couple solo shows in the GTA. After college she was hired to do several album covers for Canadian Musicians such as Lifestory:Monologue, Spencer Burton, Illitry, and Ben Fretz.

After her post-secondary education, Jen moved to Toronto and integrated herself into the local illustration community with her former teachers and peers. Participating in group shows and local meet ups, she was introduced to an art director and landed a freelance job with Telus Canada. Working with an art director helped move her work into a more joyful era with cleaner backgrounds and colourful dreamscapes. This started a cascade of events, from being the poster artist for Guelph's Art On The Street Festival, as well as many other art markets in Southern Ontario. Her work was also selected for two Collective Arts cans which were distributed across Canada, US, Italy, Spain, France, Sweden and Australia. This created a lot of traction for selling her originals and limited prints, and are now found and collected in many countries across the world.