SEP 10, 2010 – OCT 8, 2010
Starting Friday September 10, 2010, at 7:00 pm, Common Sense presents Fact and Fancy – An exhibition of narrative paintings by Jessica Plattner. Jessica Plattner is an Oregon artist and educator whose narrative paintings reflect her love of art history and her interest in all kinds of stories: literary, cultural, and personal. Her work has been exhibited in solo, group, and juried shows in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Italy. Her paintings are in the permanent collections of the Southwestern Oregon Community College and the Grande Ronde Hospital Regional Medical Center, and were recently featured in the High Desert Journal.
Plattner has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship to Mexico, a Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant, a Skowhegan Fellowship at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, a University Fellowship at Tyler School of Art, and several Faculty Scholar awards from Eastern Oregon University. She was one of ten national finalists for the 2008 Miami University Young Painters Competition for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award. Jessica is currently Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Oregon University and a board member of the Union County Art and Culture Center.
Jessica Plattner’s Statement:
My paintings reflect my love of art history and my interest in all kinds of stories: literary, cultural, and personal. I’m particularly interested in where these stories overlap and contradict one another. How does our individual experience reflect and distort society’s archetypes? In my work, I merge narratives from classical mythology or the bible with the personal stories or dreams of real people who model for me. Some works focus more heavily on the literary narrative, while others focus entirely on the life story of the model. I want the viewer to connect with the characters I depict, and to question the influence of society’s narratives on the roles we all play in life. My creative process involves extensive preparation for each piece, including conversations and interviews with models, research into literary or cultural sources, and study of relevant art-historical references.
Rather than illustrating a narrative, I look for complex relationships between the real life of the model and the idealized life of the story. As each model’s experience is multifaceted and varied, each painting becomes more intricate throughout its development with layered visual and conceptual elements. The structure of each composition is informed by art history’s broad array of pictorial and painterly languages, from Italian Renaissance to German Expressionism to Mexican Social Realism.
Common Sense 