Jennifer Roberts

Jennifer Roberts’ informal arts education began through her love of Argentine tango and living in Buenos Aires. Tango combines focused attention to the technical minutiae with a wild abandon to the present moment, and that creative tension is intoxicating. Jennifer also draws inspiration from the sacred geometry found in Islamic art, especially the old Ottoman palaces in Turkey where she has also lived. The beauty of geometric forms, repeated endlessly, are a mirror for the infinite facets of the divine.

Hexagons in particular hold deep significance for her. Perfectly symmetrical, highly efficient, they’re found everywhere in nature. Hexagons are the basis of organic chemistry. All life is built on a scaffolding of hexagons. A hexagonal storm crowns the planet Saturn, the astrological giver of harsh lessons that yield tremendous personal growth. A hexagon also sits at the heart of the Star of David, symbolizing divine perfection and the integration of the masculine and feminine principles.

Jennifer is drawn to the secret hidden life of microbes and viruses and how that contrasts with the ethereal perfection of the hexagon at both a micro and macro scale. Similar to the tango, the hexagon’s ethereal, serene perfection coexists in creative tension with florid, teeming, turbid, chaotic life. It underpins the furious reproductive life of microbes and the unrelenting, florid growth of plants.

Jennifer often begins with washes of watercolor, sometimes directing it with brushes, pipettes, and spray bottles, other times letting it flow naturally. The result is a dynamic expression of media that remains tantalizingly beyond complete conscious control. Ink additions create tension and call to mind something organic, yet celestial.