Jenny Day
Maximum Saturation
2019
Acrylic, colored pencil, paint pen, spray paint, flashe, glitter, and collage on canvas
96 x 72 inches
I chose this painting because of a despair and loss that I have felt about our environment and our interactions. Long before COVID, but it has become especially heightened now.
From my artist statement:
How many ways can one approach mourning? I've tried to jest at it, deconstruct it, cover loss in trashy glamour and glitter and reassemble it so the source material is only hinted at. An assemblage of Instagram snippets and sad wry and sour jokes and heartbreak.
Still, loss cuts through everything. I keep trying to title paintings Failed Utopia. "Used that one already" my husband says, "or some variant of it. You want to name every painting that." And it's true. California is omnipresent, a grounding, overlaid with other landscapes, Utah, Cambodian beaches, Dubai. Misplaced animals stand as totemic witnesses to a world eroded by an accumulation of insults both large and small. And I'm letting go of the hope of ever seeing it any other way. Damaged landscapes, pulled apart, puzzled over, persevering with a litany of scars.