Artisan Spotlight Featuring Jennifer Ferris

WRITTEN BY Blair Farris

While perusing the beautiful works of art at Gregg Irby Gallery, I came across the talented emerging artist Jennifer Ferris. Her mixed media pieces “incorporate papers, fabric, charcoal, ink, pencil and gouache into acrylic paintings.” Jennifer strives for her works to be beautiful but also to make the viewer stop and think, “to contemplate the meaning behind the layers of work.” As Jennifer explains, “The craziness of my backgrounds reflects the busyness we all experience in our lives, running from one thing to the next, with kids, and work, and dinner, and pets, and trying to keep it all together. Repeating graphic elements represent those constants in our lives that hold us steady: our families, jobs, homes and friends.”

I was drawn to Jennifer’s use of vibrant color and texture. She starts her paintings with recycled materials such as ground-up wine corks and old fabric scraps to create a textured surface. For Jennifer, the process is just important as the end result. In her bird series, she always has a beautiful tiny bird in the midst of the colorful chaos. The overall look is abstract with a touch of reality and nature such as the bird: “The birds, flowers and animals are there to remind us of the beauty that God provides.”