Jolene Powell
Marietta, OH
Website
jolenepowell.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
Abstract landscapes that are the balance of representation, chance, and play. After a long career as a landscape painter, my recent work explores all aspects of the subject I have alluded to my entire career: the spiritual, political, magical, and beautiful. In 2024, I see any person working with the landscape as a documentarian and political artist, for nature is ever-changing at the hands of humans. The places where we find respite and inspiration are affected by storms, overpopulation, deforestation, and other environmental, climate change issues. Since my first landscape paintings, I have always selected places directly touched by climate change and/or places with active programs to minimize human impact on the environment.
What inspires you?
What inspires me is a very long list, because I am constantly in awe of anything in nature both big and small; however, light is a continual source of inspiration. I love watching storms and the unusual light patterns and filters that reshape an everyday landscape. My backyard transforms into something I have never seen with seasons, storms, and anomalies all the time and it never gets old.
Can you speak about your process?
I am in a constant dance between chance and restraint. I often begin with contour line drawing, then I “play” with rollers and brayers to obscure the empty canvas because starting a painting is my least favorite part. I like to have something to respond to and interact with; however, this makes my work very unpredictable.
I rely a lot on intuition and expertise: I react to an “accidental” texture I create by rubbing and wiping the paint. I respond to what I see and hone in on an area to refine, which is the dance and back and forth, push and pull, defining and obscuring, that I partake in until the painting tells me it’s done (and sometimes, I go too far and don’t listen).
How did you become interested in art?
All through school I played music but then I stupidly played volleyball, and as the most non-athletic person alive, I should have known better. I broke my little figure which left me mildly disfigured and no longer able to reach all the keys on my saxophone, and I thought, what the hell, let’s take an art class. And as they say, the rest is history, my focus shifted from music to art. Also, in college, I took an environmental science class that forever solidified the direction of my subject. I became acutely aware of the fragility of nature and the travesty of human impact, and with a few detours have painted the landscape ever since.
Additionally, in college, I had an internship at the now-closed, Salander-O’Reilly Gallery in New Your City. Driving back to my home state of West Virginia the sun was setting and I saw the mountains I grew up with, in a different light, almost for the first time. While I loved being in NYC and my internship experience, that moment, coming home, literally took my breath away and I have often chased that feeling in my work: capturing the awe of a sunset.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
Some of my favorite artists right now are Jess Cannon and Amy Lincoln, I love their treatment of the landscape and color combinations.
I had the following Ralph Waldo Emerson quote added in the stairwell of the art building where I work: “What lies behind us, and what lies before us, are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Another favorite by Hilma af Klint: “Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form, and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life.”
And Reshma Saujani (Smith College 2023 Commencement speaker, founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First): “Worry less about being perfect and focus on being brave.”
What advice do you have for younger artists?
As an artist/educator in a small liberal arts college in the mid-west, the advice I often have to give my students is to make their own work. They want to tell someone else’s story or make their paintings look like artwork that already exists. Additionally, I encourage my students to broaden their definitions of successful artwork: I don’t want them to get so caught up in the message and lose sight of the quality of the medium, and conversely, I don’t want them to be completely focused on only realism, with no intention.
To any young artist, I give the same advice given to me, and that is to blaze your trail. Use social media. If you aren’t getting exhibitions, curate a show and hang it in a friend’s garage, apartment, or any place. Then promote the exhibition. Ask peers in your circle to promote the exhibition or an artist you admire to write about the exhibition. Always do what you love, and when the periods come where you hate everything you make, try something new, or shake up your process. Being an established artist does not mean that you can dodge the lows, you just learn to cope with them more healthy way.
