Jennifer Packer Explained

Jennifer Packer
Birth Date:1984
Birth Place:Philadelphia, PA
Training:Tyler School of Art
BFA – 2007
Yale University School of Art
MFA – 2012
Nationality:American
Field:Visual Art
Awards:Hermitage Greenfield Prize and the Rome Prize

Jennifer Packer (born 1984)[1] is a contemporary American painter and educator based in New York City.[2] Packer's subject matter includes political portraits, interior scenes, and still life featuring contemporary Black American experiences. She paints portraits of contemporaries, funerary flower arrangements, and other subjects through close observation.[3] Primarily working in oil paint, her style uses loose, improvisational brush strokes, and a limited color palette.

Early life and education

Packer was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[4] [5] She attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007. In 2012, she graduated from Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking.

Work

After completing her MFA, Packer moved to the Bronx, and later became an assistant professor in the painting department at Rhode Island School of Design.[6] She is currently an assistant professor at Cooper Union.[7]

Themes within art

Packer has been inspired by social justice movements, which can be seen through her floral work representing institutional violence against Black Americans and the resulting grief. For her portraits, she depicts friends and family in an intimate style that is meant to avoid a straightforward reading. In 2013, she made art featuring body parts such as fingers, knees, and protruding jaw lines of straining bodies emerging from the haze, an example of which is Lost In Translation. In 2017, Transfiguration (He's No Saint)[8] shows a young African-American man wearing glasses with two raised arms. The majority of his body is rendered dramatically in brilliant yellow, red, and green. This work represents the prevention of a stop and search of a Black man by police. Circular parts on his flesh signify the marks of stigmata. The figure's eyes are half closed, indicating loss of what he is or expects out of the world. The Mind Is Its Own Place (2020)[9] shows a level of depression and complexity of the human mind within her work through a limited palette in a charcoal drawing.

Settings on art

Packer's subjects are African Americans, and her themes center around oneness. Her art is political,[10] recognizing the social discord all people witness or are affected by in this generation. Despite her art not focusing on the entirety of social injustice, it does bring awareness to inequality within the United States.[11] Visually Impaired is one of her early works which expresses realization and abstraction. It intends to resemble Ferdinand Holder's 19th century deathbed art pieces. In some of her 2017 artwork, she aimed to achieve contrast and depth. Say Her Name, a flower oil canvas piece, is another example, created as a growing flower drawn like a forest. According to a video interview, in most of her early works she decides to create a memento, a slight reference in her artwork to a past artist she was either inspired by or had similar real-life goals in art. Packer tends to draw most human figures with realistic details.

Artistic practice

Packer paints expressionist portraits, interior scenes, and still life.[12] She is interested in authenticity, encounters, and exchanges in relation to her painting practice. The models for her portraits are often friends or family members.

In her 2020 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London, her expressionistic paintings were all oils on canvas. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!) shows her reaction to the killing of Breonna Taylor. A painting of flowers, a traditional form of still life, was used in Say Her Name to reference the death of Sandra Bland. Other portraits indicate inspiration from western sources as diverse as Henri Matisse and Caravaggio as well as Americans Kerry James Marshall and Philip Guston.[13]

She was included in the 2019 traveling exhibition Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art.[14]

Selected exhibitions

Awards and Fellowships

In 2013, Packer was awarded the Rema Hort Mann Grant. In 2012–2013, Packer was an Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem,[25] and from 2014 to 2016, a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[26] [27]

In 2020, she won the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, which included a commission to produce a new work that will premiere in 2022 at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. Packer also won the Rome Prize in 2020 from the American Academy in Rome and was a Rome Prize Fellow from January 11–August 6, 2021.[28]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Cotter . Holland . 29 November 2012 . Racial Redefinition in Progress . limited . live . https://archive.today/20240121231518/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/arts/design/fore-at-studio-museum-in-harlem.html . 21 January 2024 . 21 January 2024 . The New York Times.
  2. Web site: Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230328214140/https://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/jennifer-packer . 28 March 2023 . 2 June 2022 . . en-US.
  3. Web site: 2021 . Exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20231105050203/https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/jennifer-packer/ . 5 November 2023 . 24 June 2022 . Serpentine Galleries . en-GB.
  4. Web site: 2017 . Exhibitions Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230604004148/http://renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/528/jennifer-packer-tenderheaded/ . 4 June 2023 . 21 January 2023 . . en.
  5. Web site: Perrée . Rob . 8 May 2014 . Jennifer Packer . live . https://archive.today/20240122000213/https://africanah.org/jennifer-packer/ . 22 January 2024 . 30 May 2022 . AFRICANAH.ORG.
  6. Web site: Painting Faculty: Jennifer Packer - Associate Professor . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20230404142137/https://www.risd.edu/academics/painting/faculty/jennifer-packer . 4 April 2023 . 24 June 2022 . Rhode Island School of Design.
  7. Web site: Jennifer Packer . 2024-04-20 . The Cooper Union . en.
  8. Web site: Phillips . Claire . 2 February 2021 . Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied with Seeing . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230731115645/https://brooklynrail.org/2021/02/artseen/Jennifer-Packer-The-Eye-Is-Not-Satisfied-With-Seeing . 31 July 2023 . 21 January 2024 . The Brooklyn Rail.
  9. Web site: 2021 . Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230405055638/https://whitney.org/exhibitions/jennifer-packer?section=2 . 5 April 2023 . 24 June 2022 . . en.
  10. Web site: Hardinon . Marques . 4 June 2021 . Artist Spotlight: Jennifer Packer . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20220626071738/https://blog.artgence.co/post/artist-spotlight-jennifer-packer . 26 June 2022 . 2 June 2022 . Manifesto! . Artgence . en.
  11. Web site: Joseph . Ella . ‘The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing’: review . theboar.org/ . 27 March 2024.
  12. Web site: Manlaykhaf . Youssra . McVeigh . Róisín . Jennifer Packer's Political Still Lifes & Intimate Portraits Centre Black lives . www.serpentinegalleries.org/ . 27 March 2024.
  13. News: Gompertz . Will . 5 December 2020 . Jennifer Packer: Will Gompertz reviews the artist's show at the Serpentine Gallery . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230404142134/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55181949 . 4 April 2023 . 5 December 2020 . BBC News.
  14. Book: Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art . . 2020 . 9781942884590 . Sargent . Antwaun . New York, NY . 156–160 . en . 1197085245.
  15. Web site: 2012 . Exhibition: Fore . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230610004222/https://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/fore . 10 June 2023 . 21 January 2024 . Studio Museum in Harlem.
  16. Web site: 4 September 2015 . Jennifer Packer. Treading Water . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230404195153/https://www.meer.com/en/17361-jennifer-packer-treading-water . 4 April 2023 . 9 March 2022 . Wall Street International Magazine [now Meer] . en.
  17. Web site: 2015 . Jennifer Packer: Treading Water . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230404142136/https://www.artrabbit.com/events/jennifer-packer-treading-water . 4 April 2023 . 9 March 2022 . ArtRabbit . en.
  18. News: Fateman . Johanna . 2019 . Goings on about town: Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230404193739/https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/jennifer-packer . 4 April 2023 . 4 March 2019 . The New Yorker.
  19. Schwabsky . Barry . March 2019 . Jennifer Packer . live . . 67 . 7 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230607231404/https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201903/jennifer-packer-78707 . 7 June 2023 . 22 March 2019.
  20. Web site: Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230929043222/https://whitney.org/artists/18966 . 29 September 2023 . 21 January 2024 . . en.
  21. Web site: Gryntaki . Gelly . 10 June 2021 . The power of colour - The brilliant painting of Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230405120645/https://www.art-cat.gr/texts/category/siro41l9gft27uqmdhzyhl17ft27mf . 5 April 2023 . 21 January 2024 . Gelly Gryntaki . en-US.
  22. Web site: 2021 . Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20231219213619/https://www.moca.org/exhibition/jennifer-packer-every-shut-eye-aint-asleep . 19 December 2023 . 21 January 2024 . Museum of Contemporary Art.
  23. News: D’Souza . Aruna . 18 November 2021 . Jennifer Packer: Painting as an Exercise in Tenderness . limited . live . https://archive.today/20211120151319/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/arts/design/jennifer-packer-whitney.html . 20 November 2021 . 21 January 2024 . The New York Times.
  24. Web site: 2021 . P.5 - Prospect New Orleans: Yesterday we said tomorrow . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230607162503/https://ogdenmuseum.org/exhibition/p-5-prospect-new-orleans/ . 7 June 2023 . 21 January 2024 . . en-US.
  25. Web site: Artists: Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240122002208/https://www.studiomuseum.org/artists/jennifer-packer . 22 January 2024 . 21 January 2024 . . en.
  26. Web site: All Fellows . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20231220103136/https://fawc.org/program/all-fellows/ . 20 December 2023 . 24 June 2022 . . en-US.
  27. Web site: Daniels . Karu F. . 18 February 2020 . Visual artist Jennifer Packer named recipient of 2020 Hermitage Greenfield Prize . subscription . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230405135028/https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-artist-jennifer-packer-2020-hermitage-greenfield-prize-20200219-fjqshsg5hbflfe2pxkvoymdora-story.html . 5 April 2023 . 13 November 2020 . New York Daily News.
  28. Web site: 2020 . Rome Prize Fellows Jennifer Packer . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20200726062353/https://www.aarome.org/people/rome-prize-fellows/jennifer-packer . 26 July 2020 . 21 January 2024 . American Academy in Rome.

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