Jennifer Goldfinger
Jennifer Goldfinger is a painter and fine artist as well as a children’s book author and illustrator. Her fine art and illustrations often inform and play off of each other. Jennifer works with wax, oil stick and photographs as well as other ingredients to juxtapose present and contemporary worlds with times and forms of the past. By using organic images and figures with contrast scratching, transfers and other building blocks, she encloses or energizes the figures and illustrates narrative elements such as frustration, solitary peace or active play. In the solitary figures Jennifer imagines the inner thoughts of the characters and pulls the story out with playful collage.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My two forms of creative expression, fine art and children’s books, share themes of isolation, contemplation, empowerment and imagination.
In the formative years of my middle childhood, my family lived on a farm with neighbors too far apart to know — it was a lonely existence, but in a setting that tickled my imagination. My still resonating emotion from that time unavoidably creeps into my work. As I sift through vintage photographs, I am pulled in by certain expressions on certain children’s faces, and from there the process begins. In working with these characters, I find empathy for them and for my young self. While there is a degree of personal catharsis in this process, I also know there are universal truths here, and perhaps ultimately a greater catharsis as viewers connect with these forgotten souls.
In my art, the interaction between found antique images and my own photography and encaustic collage work bring forward modern design balanced with nostalgic subject matter. The accessibility and playfulness reflect my work in children’s literature and an imagined context unfolds into a story of the viewer’s own.
