Bio

Born and raised in New York City, Jeannie Motherwell inherited a love of painting from her father, Robert Motherwell, and stepmother, Helen Frankenthaler, two pillars of mid-century abstraction. She studied painting at Bard College and the Art Students League in New York. Continuing with her art after college, she became active in arts education at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. Later, relocating to Cambridge, MA, she worked at Boston University for the graduate program in Arts Administration 2002 – 2015. She served on the Cambridge Arts Council Public Art Commission from 2004 – 2007 and is currently on the Provincetown Arts Magazine Board of Directors, an Honorary Art Advisor Member for Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (NH), and is on the Advisory Board for Joy Street Artists Open Studios in Somerville, MA. Her work has been featured in public and private collections throughout the US and abroad.

Jeannie’s studio is in Somerville, MA. She is represented by the M Fine Arts Galerie in Boston, MA and Palm Beach, FL and by The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

Artist Statement

Having vacationed on Cape Cod Bay since childhood, my work is influenced by the constantly changing landscape that surrounds me, and — when not within hearing distance of the waves lapping or crashing onshore — by the images of celestial phenomena as seen from the Hubble telescope in outer space. I am amazed by the images and mysteries of the oceans and skies in changing weather, Hubble-type images of the universe, and my own physicality during the painting process. It has inspired my paintings, which have an intimacy to the space in them but also an immensity.

The pouring process I use and the mere physicality of it helps me explore spatial complexities that yield marvelous surprises, taking me in directions I cannot anticipate. There are things that happen in my paintings that I cannot explain as I contemplate layer upon layer with intermittent editing and erasing. I may try to control the paintings while working, but I am really searching for answers to make the unexpected work for me. It is about exploring the unknown and then refining it to reflect a visceral memory or experience. I like to think of my paintings as ‘events’ or ‘occurrences’ — that is, actions that emerge in the here and now.

The Painting Process: Pouring, pushing and layering — creating Pyrifera (a 2½ minute video)

Quotes

As I wrote about Motherwell, whose father was the famous Robert and whose stepmom was Helen Frankenthaler: Their influences are apparent, but there are also values embraced by much of that ground-breaking group in the 1950s, still ongoing among painters today: spontaneity, intense color, and a basic trust in the possibilities of chance. If anything, Motherwell has surpassed her elders in cultivating a lush and opulent vision that builds on the lyrical impulses of a previous generation. Call it expressionism without angst.
—Ann Landi, Founder & Editor Vasari21.com

Jeannie Motherwell’s work pits generation against collapse, and are as capricious as light flashing on water. They pin us with similar intensity — a moment of coming to be that will just as soon vanish.
—Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe

As the daughter of two artistic icons, how do you find your own path and message in the art world? Jeannie Motherwell has managed to do both.
—Dirk Vanduffel, Artdependence Magazine, Belgium, 2017

The artwork is ‘an event, an occurrence’; that is, an action that emerges in the here and now. At issue is the nature of creation; the ‘subject-matter’ of Motherwell’s work is an ‘artistic creation’ itself, a symbol of the images and mysteries of creation.
—Gerardo Gil, Fine Art Critic, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract acrylic painter Jeannie Motherwell refuses to grow cold in the artistic shadow of her father and stepmother, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler. As a stable ecosystem quells its wrestling constituents, Motherwell’s refined intuition hushes the spontaneous boundaries of dilating paint on clay board panel and canvas. Over a soberly spoken interview, the New York artist admits in her work the faint pursuit of a faded horizon: the shifting waters from the view of an old home, replaced, in time, by a windowless studio. The methodology of Motherwell’s art – to draw a structure from an uncertainty – eerily echoes a ritual from her upbringing: discerning, with the right words, to the joy of her guardians, the spiritual essences behind their cascades of paint.
—Brainard Carey, Praxis Center for Aesthetic Studies

Jeannie’s paintings embody a bold re-visioning of abstract painting. The paintings seem to live in a realm between motion and stillness, micro and macro seeing at the same time. This simultaneousness makes for a vigorous dynamic of what exists as imagination and what is perceived. The work is exciting, the color palette luscious, the overall impact is breathtaking. Alchemy!
—Rose Austin, Photographer, Educator, and former director of the Massachusetts Culture Council

Jeannie Motherwell’s new paintings span the distance between far flung galaxies and the crust of the earth. Much like Gaston Bachelard’s reflections on intimacy and immensity, they speak of memories and dreams, evoking—improbably, delightfully—both the solidity of landscape and transparency of smoke.
—Necee Regis, Writer/photographer

The sensual stain of Jeannie Motherwell’s paintings evoke the change of seasons – fall color, a balance of warmth with the impending chill, slicked over a ground of winter white. Like the first frost over newly fallen leaves.
—Erin Becker, Norma Jean Calderwood Director, Cambridge Art Association

Jeannie has been inspired by images she first saw from the Hubble Space Telescope. I was drawn in by Jeannie’s use of color and flow in her paintings and by the way I felt like I was looking at something familiar and completely unknown all at the same time. I also love that Jeannie’s inspiration comes not only from space, but also from our oceans (or what a lot of us like to call inner space) and where there is still so much to explore.
—Nicole Stott, Artist, Former USA Astronaut, International Association Of Astronomical Artists

CV

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