Jenny Berry

Group Show: Open Season

jberryart — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 15:14:48 +0000

I’m excited to announce my piece “Chasing Ghosts” got accepted into Open Season, a nationally juried group show at Art Center Sarasota.

The show opens with a reception and garden party from 5:00 – 9:00 Thursday December 12 and is on view until January 17, 2020.

Art Center Sarasota knows how to throw a party too. Food trucks, craft beer tents, wineries all in the front parking lot and garden. It’s always a good time so if you’re in the area you don’t want to miss it. All four galleries will be taken over for this show so you know it’ll be a good one.This is their first ever nationally juried show and it’s going to be judged by curator, writer and consultant Mark Ormond so I am beyond honored to be included in it. Hope to see you there.

Read the original post about Chasing Ghosts here.

Post update 12/12: I just came from the opening which was amazing. There is so much good work in this show. If you live in the Sarasota area you should stop in and check it out and support our local Art Center. It’s an incredible place! It’s been around since 1926, the first art establishment in this city which is really saying something.

I was jaw dropped when I walked in the door tonight and saw my painting on the front cover of the program! I had no idea. They had a lot of truly great art to choose from for that cover and I am very honored.

Apple With Leaves

jberryart — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 23:44:08 +0000

11 x 14 oil on panel

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Did this apple as a demo in one of my oil painting classes today. The simple round form of apples and pears are the best examples of how objects turn from light to dark. Showing that dramatically helps make things look dimensional and not flat on a canvas. A lot of people want to start with faces which have dozens of forms on them, starting there often made me discouraged and want to give up. But once I mastered simple forms moving on to faces was less overwhelming. After really focusing on these apples for two sittings of three hours and learning beginning color mixing students begin to understand why I want to wait a bit. This was the under painting after about ten minutes.

I don’t know how I managed without an easel but I didn’t end up with any paint on my arm reaching over my palette like that. Usually I’d be covered – probably because I was only sitting for a minute, some of the time I was standing because I found it difficult to reach over the palette (yeah, duh). I just kind of go into a trance and I don’t notice things. I’ll bring my portable easel when I demo in the future. They had tabletop easels, I just didn’t even grab one I just started painting without thinking.

A lot of my beginning students prefer to paint flat and at first I find them clipping their reference in front of them on the easel while their palette and canvas is flat in front of them. I’m totally fine with that. These are beginners and I’m throwing some pretty advanced color mixing at them, nagging them about their value range accuracy and pushing them to use larger brushes than they’re comfortable with. I can let them slide on some little comforts for a while that don’t seem early on to be hurting the bigger picture – not yet anyway, at some point that flat painting will effect their brush strokes and as some of them already have moved up onto the easel, they’ll want their canvases up off the table too.

Sometimes… I will make things so difficult for myself and I don’t know why I do that, absent mindedness probably, my mind is already in the painting I’m sure. I have to try to stay in the moment as they say. I didn’t even think about it while I was painting but I just worked like that the whole time today. I’m only thinking about it now as I look at this photo, “Oh right, I’m supposed to be more mindful… right, gotta do that.” Pick up eggs, get gas, be more mindful. Oh yeah, that’s totally working. I feel more mindful already.

Jeffrey

jberryart — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 12:19:49 +0000

12″ x 12″ oil on panel

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Roxy

jberryart — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 14:57:20 +0000

14″ x 11″ oil on panel

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Casper Ragdoll

jberryart — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 22:14:26 +0000

12″ x 12″ oil on panel

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White Lab

jberryart — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 07:08:29 +0000

9 x 12 Oil on Gessobord

I’ve only done a few pet portraits in my life, mostly for family and friends but based on my Old Masters Animal Portraits I was asked by Art Center Sarasota if I’d teach a pet portrait workshop this year. Pet portraits are just sooooo not what I do!

Because of their unique expressions, fur texture, struggling to capture their likeness and all sorts of other challenges, pet portraits can be quite difficult to master – until you get used to painting them. But then they’re actually super fun!

Lucky for me the people who run Art Center Sarasota are the coolest so when I asked them to give me a couple weeks to play around with some pet portraits and see if I felt like I could wrangle a room full of beginners – all working on different animals, of which they dearly love – and they hope to get a likeness of by the end of a two HALF DAY workshops into something they are happy with. [Read: One Very Tough Assignment] They gave me the green light.

Now I may end up with some more advanced people in there but I wanted to work with a scenario of all beginners and would I be able to do it. I usually teach where we’re all working with the same reference or still life set up. So this will be um… fun. I mean fun! Actually I’m joking. I am sure it will. I just have my dad’s sarcastic sense of humor I have no doubts we’ll be able to do it. It’s a complicated subject for 2 days and it’ll be intense but I’ve got some contingencies in place.

We’re just going to make it fun and anyone that doesn’t finish is welcome to come to any of my local classes and sit in for free until they finish or email me pics of their progress and work at home until they finish. We’re not going to stress. You can’t learn or do good work under pressure. I’ve never believed you can absorb anything in a workshop if you’re too stressed so there’ll be none of that.

I’m working very hard to make sure they’re successful! Pet portraits can be dicey because people are emotionally attached to the subject matter. Painting an apple is different somehow. You can love apples but somehow we just love our pets on another level and it makes us more serious when we work on them I think.

Golden Retriever Head Study

jberryart — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 20:17:52 +0000

6″ x 6″ oil on panel

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Three Gamblin Tubes

jberryart — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:58:20 +0000

SOLD

5 x 7 oil on panel

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Great Heron

jberryart — Sat, 22 Jun 2019 22:56:09 +0000

5″ x 3″ oil on panel

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Reed Warbler

jberryart — Sat, 22 Jun 2019 20:23:45 +0000

6″ x 6″ oil on board

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