Jennifer Mackay Windle

Background

Diploma in Fine Art from the Art Institute of Boston, 1987

3 year course of study and training in the classical method; extensive work with the figure in drawing, painting and sculpture, colour theory and design, art history, printmaking, oil painting and ceramics.

Other training

Intense plein-air painting course in France (1986), interpreting nature with oils and acrylics on canvas

1 yr. study of illustration and painting at Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA. (1983)

Published Author and illustrator of 2 instructional books about drawing with pastels;

Regular exhibitor in Suffolk Open Studios events; co-creator of Boston’s Beacon Hill Art Walk, an annual outdoor exhibit featuring professional New England artists in variety of mediums.

Currently represented by Thompson’s Gallery, Aldeburgh and London

Languages: English and French

Artist statement

As a visual artist, I have a strong belief that a solid understanding in the application and use of the formal elements in art (line, shape, form, tone, texture, colour and space) are essential to create stimulating, successful, interesting work, whether the medium is paint, clay, glass or pastels. Once these elements are fully understood, they provide the artist with the means with which to express his/her ideas and concepts. But intellectual understanding and skills with a certain medium are not enough. One must have passion and inspiration to fire your engines and drive you forward in the creative process – and I have a feeling I can help my students with that.

My own passion and inspiration comes from my emotional responses to a subject, then the desire to share those responses with others. A delicate frost crystallised on a field, the translucency in a bunch of grapes or the contrasting forms and lines of a model can all trigger my creative senses so much that I feel compelled to paint immediately. Once I start to draw I can be lost in my concentration of the subject. My main focus is to describe a subject’s significance to me by using a combination of the formal elements in a pleasing way.

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