Jena Thomas

Born in South Florida, Jena Thomas is a South Carolina-based artist. Thomas has exhibited extensively in Florida and the Northeast, with exhibitions at the Alvarez Gallery, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Context New York, and Art Palm Beach. Recently featured in Studio Visit magazine and the art publication New American Painting for a second time, Thomas is a recipient of the Ruth Katzman Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York and a finalist for the 701 Center for Contemporary Art Prize and Miami University’s Young Painters Competition. Thomas received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA, and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL. Jena Thomas’s work is currently represented by the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, CT.


Artist Statement

Human. Nature.

My work engages in a contemporary dialogue with human nature and landscape. I am interested in how human beings idealize what nature is and then use this as a basis to create artificial environments for ourselves to exist within. I believe there is a timelessness to our natural environments that can never be replicated by man-made space, and yet it is our human nature to do just that. The natural landscape suggests a permanence, and still, it is ever-changing, adjusting to the world that transforms around it. I am interested in depicting this state of transience and collision in my work.

Through painting and drawing, I examine human nature’s innate drive to “make our mark” on the natural world around us. I find the idea of a snapshot as a means to “keep” part of the world fascinating. Photographs of people engaged in moments of conquest and triumph—hunting, fishing, and cliff diving—while also drawing on my own memories and experiences with nature, help to create an amalgamation of my impressions. My objective is to create a transient otherworld in which recognizable imagery is fused with emotive abstractions to suggest a landscape that is familiar but doesn’t exist.

While I continue to work with this subject, I strive to maintain a consistent vein between man-made objects, otherworldly colors, and a disorienting portrayal of how humans have managed to make the natural more sublime.


www.jenathomasart.com