Serendipity is 60” x 48” x 1.5” Oil on Canvas
How do birds see the world? What serendipity befalls one who flies over the landscape?
I imagine gliding over an ocean edge, above a shoal, where waves break against a cliff and colors dance together in the sunlight. Does panorama soften into a sense of peace? Or energize into a spirit of adventure?
Lifting, like appreciation or acknowledgement, thermals carry me up a cliff face and release me, soaring, into the deep blue of the sky.
“Avalon”
The legend of Avalon is that of an enchanted land, where women ruled as the creators of life and keepers of knowledge.
It is the place King Arthur is said to have gone to heal after a battle. The Avalon story tells of a time when the rise and spread of Christianity resulted in the corresponding loss of feminine ritual and belief. As fewer and fewer people remembered the old stories, Avalon, as a place, an idea, a belief disappeared into the mists; an end to an age.
Two days after the 2016 presidential election, I felt a rise of something new -- and a slipping away of the ideals of justice, equality and opportunity for all. The parallels felt staggering to me.
Justice, liberty, freedom are not legislated. They are instead beliefs that exist because we value, respect and honor their importance. And if enough of us forget their importance, like Avalon, they may disappear into into the mist, and we may experience an end to an age.
Avalon by Jennifer Spencer, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 60” x 1.5”
“Awakening”
Awakening by Jennifer Spencer, Oil on Canvas, 48” x 36” x 1.5”
If we must travel through darkness, is it possible to find acceptance for the journey
and to gain insight into our other-selves? Is there something about understanding the raw pain of this deeply self-intimate, contracted space that generates a deeper level of compassion? A broader sense of gratitude?
And so, in a moment, my world burst forth in an exquisite, expanding motion. Movement and colors. An awakening.
Happy filled me first with orange -- vivid, bright, lively orange. And with the orange, came hope
“Reverence”
Reverence by Jennifer Spencer, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 48” x 1.5”
More than the ocean, and more than the mountains,
being in the redwood forest of northern California gave me a glimpse of primordial wisdom, a feeling of substantial, a reverence for quiet.
It was raining. I became a character in childhood fairy tales and magic. I was a deer with a silent step.
I could almost feel where life began.
Jennifer’s paintings enliven commercial and residential spaces:
