JadeReinhardt
I’m a 25-year-old self-taught artist from Montreal, Canada, working with oils and collage. While I’ve never followed any technical art course, I’m a passionate art history PhD student working on the Italian Renaissance. I’ve studied some of the paintings that mean the most to me through the magnifying glass; and through travel and obsession, I’ve come to understand how artists create faces, spaces, and emotions.
Although I’m academically specializing in landscape, it’s always been portraiture that strikes a sensitive chord within me and inspires me the most. Some of my works are built entirely around iconic paintings by the old masters, while others incorporate these influences as small details—almost like Easter eggs. Art history is always incorporated into my work; my art is, in itself, a continuation of the things that inspire me.
I’m also fascinated by old magazines—mostly thrift store finds—from the 60s and 70s (Life Magazine, Playboy, National Geographic, etc.). Over time, some of my friends have made it their mission to dig through old neighbors’ garbage bins to find me vintage books and odd images, knowing they’ll provide the spark I need to start something new. If my art incorporates art history, it also incorporates history tout court.
I’d describe my style as very expressive—a colorful, sometimes dreamlike, spontaneous, busy, and surrealistic expressionism.
I’ve only recently started to share my work. I participated in a feminist vernissage organized by my university in early 2024—that’s all. I’m not yet an emerging artist; I barely even have a toe out there. 😉
Statement
I started painting—really painting—during the pandemic. For me, it was a very reflective period, questioning the definitions of comfort, solitude, isolation, and chaos. “What’s a cocoon?” “How do I really feel, here, confined in my space?”
The first series I painted is an open window into people’s complete intimacy—the isolated interior spaces of imagined characters. I wanted to explore, through art and expression, the confronting intricacies of loneliness and utter comfort with oneself—away from any prying eyes. These three “portraits of interior spaces,” if I can call them that, are meant to be playful, chaotic, and nostalgic, perhaps reflective of my own internal world as a teenage girl. These spaces reveal interiorities full of contradictions, balancing themes of sexuality, religion, freedom, claustrophobia, safety, and anxiety.
As is perhaps obvious, one of the most important themes for me is interiority. Sometimes, I want the interior spaces I paint to feel more surreal and dreamlike. This is when motifs from canonical art history pieces become the central objects in my work.
