Jennifer Warren
Our creative expression is a direct window into our feelings, thoughts, realities and everything in between. If that freedom is ever taken away or becomes blocked, we can feel stunted. Oil painter Jennifer Warren actively allows her creative expression to guide her art in all of it’s forms. It’s how she expresses her own freedom and shuns the idea of ever putting her art into a box.
Many can become envious of someone who is capable of willingly expressing themselves, but that isn’t how Warren’s creative expression started – it was actively worked toward.
Avery; Jennifer Warren
“I've been oil painting for a little over 12 years. I started in college during a study abroad program,” says Warren. “I went to France and went to an art school there and that's where I learned oil paint and I've just been doing it ever since, but I would say prior to that, art was just a hobby. I didn't go to art school. I went to school for business.”
Pampaneira; Jennifer Warren
Consistently choosing art classes as an elective – from Chinese water color, ceramics and even figure drawing. The decision to go abroad put Warren on a trajectory that she would soon cherish for the rest of her life.
While in France she met some kindred spirits and quickly became comfortable in finding her creative eye. The French countryside provided plenty of inspiration.
Life Force; Jennifer Warren
“We’d go and find a place we liked and chill, drink wine, sit there and talk and try to figure out what we might want to paint,” says Warren. “And that was one of the best things about that school is you got a lot of freedom to just explore. From that experience, that's how I learned to really look at things from a painter's perspective. They call it a ‘school of seeing,’ because that's really the biggest thing that you can take away from it. So now I know the basics of oil painting, but I can also see the world from the perspective of a person who paints.”
This special experience would end up turned on its head when Warren returned from college and had to get back to her studies. The culture shock of not having as much freedom to paint, or even being able to afford supplies, put a big damper on her consistency. It wasn’t until her senior year that she picked up a brush again.
After graduating in 2009, Warren moved back to Cleveland with her family and then to Seattle with a love interest. When that relationship failed she found herself with her own apartment and a true itch to do what she knew she loved.
La Michoacana Ice Cream Shop; Jennifer Warren
“The first thing I did was go to the bookstore and buy a van Gogh book,” says Warren. “It was a biography book but with pictures. Big pictures of his paintings and I went through the book and I found the ones I really liked. And then I copied those paintings. I did a whole series of van Gogh copies. And that was probably the first actual series I did.”
Eventually landing in Chicago for work and to be close to her family in Cleveland, Warren continues to teach herself with a focus on further cultivating her relationship with her work and freedom. As a SAATCHI Art rising star in 2020, one can say she is on the right path, with a creative expression meant to blossom.
“When I think of my work, I'll be completely honest,” says Warren. “I see myself as an artist, but I don't really necessarily see myself as a painter of any sort of genre or message. I create because that's just part of who I am, that gives me purpose in and of itself. And I really avoid pigeonholing myself into ‘this is my style.’ You're going to see a bunch of different stuff from me. I never want to limit myself because I know that I can do a lot of different things.”