Not in our Woods, 2013
Miami-based artist Jena Thomas creates mesmerising landscape paintings using bold colours, simple geometrical shapes and varying textures. Depicting manmade objects such as gas stations, swimming pools and newly planted trees in unexpected palettes ranging from pastels to technicolor, her beautifully textured paintings capture the beauty of everyday sceneries.
In an interview with SLEEK Art, the painter told Corinna Hübl that moving to Miami completely transformed her working practice: “I no longer set up a traditional palette like I used to do”, she revealed. “Instead I source colours from snap shots that I take when I am out in the city. I recently made a painting that superimposed the colour from a laundromat that I go to in Little Havana. I love the combinations of the pastel turquoises, pinks and yellows with the natural earthy greens and browns of the grass and trees. The light is amazing here, the colours are fully saturated and there are certain times of day where it is so bright that objects seem to dissipate into the sunlight”. And it’s not only the light of Miami that has had an influence on the artist’s practice. Her preoccupation with manmade landscapes and human interventions in nature has grown increasingly fond in the city where golf courses, patios and swimming pools grow like trees.
Thomas has exhibited extensively in Florida and New England, with recent exhibitions at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, Boca Raton Museum of Art, and Art Palm Beach. Recently, she has been taking her experimentations with colour even further, working on a number of paintings reminiscent of photo negatives.
To see more or purchase works by Jena Thomas, please visit SLEEK Art.
Pool II, 2013
Jena Thomas Survey, 2013
Vacation 2013
To see more or purchase works by Jena Thomas, please visit SLEEK Art