About

Based in Los Angeles
Represented in the UK by Taymour Grahne

jenjones.hitchings@gmail.com

Through symbolic imagery and psychedelic color, my paintings depict the tenuous and historically mythological relationship between humankind and nature. I investigate the psyche, erotic desire, time, and cosmic forces, referencing the visual languages of Japanese folk art, Hudson River School painting, and spiritualist archetypes. Versions of cycles from the human and natural experience are rendered: lunar, solar, seasonal, menstrual, reproductive, atmospheric, and plant-life. The compositions convey oppositional, mirrored, or doubled elements, evoking uncanny symmetry. This combination results in fantastical scenes exuding specific seasons, times of day, temperatures, or moods. Referencing crude line sketches based loosely on places I’ve visited between the American northeast and southwest, I build the compositions using strategic proportions and sacred geometries. Color is methodically applied, removed, thinly stained, or thickly painted in contoured waves–all by hand with no tape or tools–resulting in widely varied textures assigned to each element in my visual language. The images include multiple versions of iconographies–celestial bodies, suns and moons, mountain ranges, oddly reflective deserts, and cloned river paths. Stars are often arranged in either Western Zodiac constellation patterns, or as letters or words in various languages, reflecting my interest in linguistics, the evolution of communication, and the significance of signs and symbols in humankind’s endless desire to make meaning of our surroundings and existence. An admiration of and trust in nature to guide us is rekindled, and a delicate wavering between serenity and sorrow, isolation and unity emerges–two opposing forces meeting within a cycle.