Jennifer Hicks

Studio #6

After the lockdown in 2020 I’ve taken a pause on the rose paintings and gone back to drawing the figure with our Monday night drawing group at Jane St Art Center. It’s been great to have wonderful artists all in the same room together drawing the model every week. It’s been inspiring, a little terrifying and has pushed me to go in a new direction as well as to revisit more classical styles of working with the figure. It’s inspired me to go back over all the years I did drawing with my instructors at The School for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and my own years of teaching too; remembering and exploring the principles of mark making. When I started back to work I followed the time periods of each pose with one drawing ( 1 min, 3 min, 5min etc.) per sheet of paper for each pose. Then I gave myself permission to stay on the paper for longer and see what happens with layering the poses. Recently I’ve taken to one canvas or paper for the entire 3 hour session, layering, removing and more layering. It’s an experiment. I don’t plan it out. I let the marks guide me and the mood of the model. I’ve been pushing the more recent work towards a like of abstract expressionism and letting a story emerge.