Jennifer Pazienza

Born 1954 in Newark, New Jersey Jennifer Pazienza lived her formative years in neighbouring Bloomfield on Grove Street adjacent to Elmwood Avenue. These places are early contributors to her landscape-based painting career and the aesthetic salvation she found as a child making art in her mother’s Italian American kitchen and garden, informs her work to this day. After receiving an undergraduate art education degree from William Paterson University 1976, she moved to Pennsylvania where she earned graduate degrees from Pennsylvania State University, a Master’s in 1985 and a PhD in 1989, both in art education with minors in painting. Her experiences teaching art in public schools and universities, research into the theory and practice of art history and her work as a painter won her the art education position at the University of New Brunswick in 1989.

Jennifer’s CV outlines scholarly articles published in academic journals that detail her various academic projects and critical analysis. She has made a career out of the discussion of art historical ideas and contemporary theory. Yet even in the world of discourse and pedagogy, she pursued research into the sensual, spiritual and tangible dimensions of landscape painting and their exhibition. An arts advocate, she has mentored and supervised graduate study, and juried and written critically for other artists. She is the creator and producer of ‘Gotta Minute?’ over 50 - 60 second YouTube videos virtually promoting New Brunswick artists around the world.

Since retirement in 2014, she has painted full time from her home and studio on Keswick Ridge. An award-winning painter, she has more than 40 solo and groups shows to her credit in Canada, the US and Italy. Her paintings reside in permanent, public and private collections in Canada, the US and Europe including, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB), McCain Corporation (Florenceville, NB), White Plains Hospital (White Plains, NY), Misterbianco (Sicily, IT) and Imago Mundi (Treviso, IT). Jennifer Pazienza is represented by Gallery 78 (Fredericton, NB) and Alex Ferrone Gallery (Long Island, NY).

Career highlight: Delivering, in Sicily, the land of her maternal heritage, and publishing her plenary address, Beautiful Dreamer: Landscape & Memory, for Art & Psyche: Layers & Liminality, an international congress of Jungian scholars and artists, remains a career highlight.

What led you to become an artist?

There were many experiences that led me to becoming and artist, but my fundamental appetite for the joys and responsibilities of living an aesthetic life, I owe to my short-lived life with my mom. I was nine when she died. She had a way of making the ordinary extraordinary. To my begging, “please, please, can I take ballet and piano lessons,” she would gently say, “we’ll see.” Then tear open a grocery store bag and tell me to “Draw!” and draw and paint I did at our Italian American New Jersey kitchen table where she would be using the same kind of bag to drain an eggplant she was frying. The dull brown paper transformed into glistening hues of Umber, Sienna and Ochre. The flour, egg and fresh breadcrumb coating insured a crispy crunch that would give way to creamy melanzane interiors developing in me a taste for contrasting colours and textures, sights, scents, and sounds too. In my family however, becoming an artist was secondary to becoming a teacher, to be an artist I had to first become an art teacher.

How did your training and experience help you to create and innovate in your artistic practice?

My artistic practice is intimately linked to my academic work and to 20 years of waiting tables! My degrees are in art education with minors in painting and photography. From undergraduate school at William Paterson University in the early 70s through MEd and PhD work at Pennsylvania State University in the 80s I could see how philosophies, theories and technical dimensions of art are metaphors for developing as a person generally and as an artist/educator specifically. Human beings are made of, and human agency depends on form and content, spirit and matter to move in the world. During PhD work at Pennsylvania State University, I was fortunate to have studied with renown American landscape painter, Richard Mayhew. He was a founding member of Spiral, a black painters' group in the 1960s in New York. Richard saw me struggling with a 70s tonal palette and suggested I try a limited colourist approach. That was 40 years ago! I’m still exploring its possibilities and Richard, at 99 years old is still painting and exhibiting.

I am also grateful to have studied with art educator and artist, Brent Wilson, internationally respected child art theoretician. His work challenged the bible like art ed doctrine of Viktor Lowenfeld. He also supervised my work in revisioning art history for children that was adopted for the Gerry Centre of Arts in Education. At 90 he is still going strong. Check out his Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/brentguywilson/ and website.

Both artist/educators conveyed to me their deep love for the art centred lives they lived. They showed me what was possible. I am grateful that they still do.

What stimulates you most about your practice?

Contemplating the stuff of the natural world, my engagement with the poetics of space, time and place experienced from the sanctuary of my Keswick Ridge studio stimulates my practice.

I vividly remember where I was the first moment I asked myself “How did we get here?” I must have been about 7 or 8. Like other artists, I have always been interested and curious about the meaning of life, of things spiritual and immaterial. How to live and act effectively in the world is at the heart of my practice. The question of where I stand in the ever-shifting landscape of human life generally and as a painter, is fueled by my desire to make sense of the challenges of human being, from a place of love and gratitude.

What motivates your creativity?

Love motivates my practice. Love as noun, verb, adjective and adverb. The longing, the giving and receiving of it. The feeling of transformation, of unselfing that love encourages and compels my creative work. The stuff of the natural world has always been my go-to place for refuge and renewal beginning in my mother’s New Jersey garden. Looking outside myself to the world, people, places and objects I experience motivates me. Seasonal changes strongly affect how I live and what and how I paint. The things I love to read, cook and listen to all coalesce and call me for attention. Recently, for example, I have been introducing objects into my landscape imagery. The vase and hydrangea painting are one such example. I have been living with that object for nearly 30 years and a few years ago, I added the braided palm. A cousin taught me how to make them. Like other cultures, Italians make them during the Easter season. They are house blessings. I have looked at the shadows those palm shapes have cast for so long then, last winter I decided to work them into a tondo that already had a ground of sky and water imagery. I haven’t painted that realistically in over 20 years. It wasn’t easy. The love I felt while making it confirmed my decision to attempt it.

How has living and working in New Brunswick helped and/or inspired you on your journey?

The decision to live and work here has been one of the best I have ever made. At the time of my interview in 1989, Gerry Clarke, the dean of education at UNB introduced me to artists in the community, Charlotte Glencross and George Fry. It didn’t take long for me to see the richness of the New Brunswick arts landscape. My work as an artist/art educator made it possible for me to work with a wide range of inspiring arts professionals. In them I found resources for my UNB students, for teachers and school students. Through them I was able to cultivate and grow as a painter.

How does your creative process unfold as you create an artwork?

Mine is a responsive practice. I do my best to show up, pay attention to what calls and get to work in paint.

Why do you think it's important to make art and pursue an artistic career?

Imagine a world without art. Got it? That’s why!

What do you think is the impact of artists' work on communities and the province as a whole?

The question of impact is an interesting one. Sometimes we don’t know or can’t be sure. With today’s communication technologies we have greater access to the affect our work has. For example, I receive lovely messages via Instagram or Messenger from generous folks who have seen my work and taken the time to tell me what it has meant to them. The arts, visual and otherwise impact the physical, mental, emotional and economic well-being of individuals, which in turn affects the well-being of the province. Remember too, that the arts are part of a whole complex of phenomena that contribute to life in New Brunswick. Imagine New Brunswick without the arts…what do you see, what do you hear, what do you feel?

Describe what you are most proud of in your career.

It’s more about gratitude than pride. Canada is my adopted country. I am grateful for the life I have been able to build in New Brunswick and to all the people who had a hand in shaping the landscape in which I am so blessed to live and work.

What advice would you give to emerging artists?

Pulitzer Prize novelist Marilynne Robinson was once asked by an interviewer, “What single thing would make the world in general a better place?”  She replied, “Loving it more.”