STATEMENT

I work from feeling rather than ideology. Inspired by the ordinary and the everyday, I respond to the personal moments in my environment, discovering beauty in expected and the unexpected, gleaning its essence from the places and objects I encounter. 

Distilling images into their simplest form is my ultimate goal. Not much is often enough. I strive to absorb the tempo of the everyday, whether from the meter of my step, the rhythm of the seasons, or the sense of the fleeting and tenuous beauty that surrounds us. It is these subliminal emotions, these moments in time, that I strive to capture in my work. 

My multidisciplinary approach relies on a variety of materials such as paper, thread, wax, natural pigments, papier mâché, inks, watercolor and washes, and found objects. One piece can include many forms of inspiration—netted fruit bags, feathers, X-acto blades, grass, looms, whisks, twigs, shadows, fog and fire, or scraps of wire to name a few. Even discarded remnants become a source of inspiration: I use and reuse almost all of any one material in the making process. Painted paper photographed for one series can become a mural, then used in an encaustic piece, or sewn onto something else for documenting. 

I’m trying to balance simplicity of expression with spontaneity of gesture to evoke the essence of the everyday. My work documents the places and times when the ordinary takes us by surprise. 

BIOGRAPHY

Jenny Phillips is an artist based in San Francisco, CA. She grew up in Eastern Long Island, Majorca and New York City. She majored in Art History at Denison University, where she was a teaching assistant in the printmaking department and was awarded the Woodrow Deckman Studio Art Scholarship. Moving back to New York City, she spent her formative years at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the late 80’s and early 90’s working as a graphic designer. The combination of theater, dance and music that Jenny witnessed at BAM continues to inform her work today, both in the moods she creates and in the gestures and rhythms she employs. She relocated to San Francisco in 1998, and as the world of graphic design shifted away from the physical and into the digital, Jenny’s love of making things eventually prompted her to pursue a full time career in art. She studied at California College of Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Kala Art Institute. Since 2010, she has exhibited her works throughout California and the US. In addition to private collections, her work can be seen at the Museum of Encaustic Art in Santa Fe, Stanford Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Sunrise Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas, and One Medical in Los Angeles. She recently completed a mural for the facade of the Lululemon store at Broadway Plaza, Walnut Creek, CA.

COMMISSIONS (corporate/public)

Lululemon Mural, Walnut Creek, CA, 2022
Levi’s Plaza Hospitality Suite, SF, CA, 2022
Happy Day Mural, Capp Street, SF, CA, 2021
Meanderings Mural, Hotel Zoe, SF, CA, 2020
SF Campus for Jewish Living, 2019 (Inclusions Gallery)
Sutter Health Medical Center, SF, 2018 (J. D. Thompson & Associates),
Kaiser Permanente, SF, CA, 2018 (Chandra Cerrito Art Advisors)
Luxury Housing Lobby, San Francisco 2018
Luxury Housing Minnesota (Hennes Art Company), 2018
Medical One waiting room, LA (Urban Chalet) 2017 
Ronald McDonald House at Stanford (Martin Group) 2016

My work has been published is Lula JAPAN Magazine, 2019

In private collections throughout the United States, England, New Zealand, Austria and France.

In the permanent collection of The Museum of Encaustic Art