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Jessica Scriver paints from a resounding curiosity of the natural world. A scientist by way of a degree in biology, her interest lies in the reactive quality of her work. Her paintings stake a claim for change; the visual moment when a reaction takes place. Using a variety of materials, Scriver sets the experiment, pushing one medium against another, to create a tension, a moment of kinetic shift. Scriver does the work she asks of her materials: to move, to change. In that commerce of reaction, Scriver plays in a flat field, where her tools, her paints, and her own participation are equal. Following the movement of her work, she works alongside it with satisfying equity. “My job is a constant dialogue of motion; to follow the movement, to let my honest response further a reply from the materials. For me, the authenticity arrives in the rejection of rigid control, and obtaining the most out of the moment. ”

When Jessica Scriver was 9 years old, she attended a retro-spective of her late relative, Gustave Bauman, the renowned woodblock artist and painter. It struck her with surprise and clarity: people could do art as their life. Bauman’s commitment as an artist made a way for Scriver to conceptualize her own desired life;  choosing  the doing of art. She earned a degree in biology from The University of Texas, Austin and studied art at Indiana University, Rhode Island School of Design, The New York Studio School and Vermont College. She lives with her family in Vermont, looking over Lake Champlain onto the Adirondack Mountains.

“My work is spontaneous, experimental and materials-driven. After building up an orderly painting surface with geometric forms, maps and perspectives, I respond with action. The goal is to portray movement on the painting surface that corresponds to the physical action of mark making. My marks are made in a variety of ways: throwing objects at the painting surface, rolling tools over the canvas, broad strokes with a squeegee, and reactive brush strokes. I experiment with different materials to make this happen letting the paint gather around the objects then scraping them off leaving behind only the paint and an impression of the object. Scale and perspective, movement and direction are captured in this way. When a painting becomes too focused, it feels static to me. I prefer the blurry edges of action.”