Artist Reception
Jennifer Worsley

Wednesday, December 3 | 5-7 PM
2nd Floor Art Gallery
Free and Open to the Public
Join us for a reception for Artist Jennifer Worsley. Her work will be for sale and on display for the month of December.

Artist Statement
The majority of my art education has been spent studying figure painting in oil, but the attraction of landscape led me to pastel. Pastel is the perfect medium for quickly capturing fleeting effects of light and weather. It integrates the linear qualities of drawing with color, which I find very suitable to my style.

I generally work on a textured surface with a terracotta pink or rust tone as a background color in my pastels. This influences the color choices that follow and sometimes reveals itself in the finished image. Color choices are also dependent on the selection of pastel chalks. I prefer to make my own chalks, which allows full control over the color, instead of relying on commercially-made pastel chalks.

I find that I discover great landscape subjects by chance, while driving or hiking. I am constantly scanning my surroundings for shadows of clouds passing over hills, the flow of water over rocks, or the perfect harmony of color at a particular moment in a sunset. What interests me in an image is a sense of movement and, by implication, the passage of time. I am inspired by the challenge of capturing this very fundamental aspect of nature.

As balance to the immediacy and spontaneity of working in pastel, I also translate landscapes into woodblock prints, using a Japanese method called moku hanga, which uses brushes to apply water-based ink to a carved block of wood, which is then printed on paper. I use a reduction method of carving, which involves printing the block in one color on each sheet of paper in my edition, carving some of the block away, and printing over the first layer in a new color. This continues until I have the final image. 

Woodblock printmaking requires a careful plan and lots of time to create an image, making it completely opposite to the way I work in pastel. I find that each technique informs and influences the other. I can see a landscape as either a light-filled, atmospheric pastel, or as a more stylized and graphic woodblock print. Some views lend themselves more to one than the other, but both hold interest for me.