Stepping Stone 32

When Jaeyoon Schalekamp came back to painting as a full-time artist, after 15 years of designing textiles, she turned to nature for inspiration. She has experimented with different subject matters and styles. The series “Poised in Nature” seems to convey her expression in the most honest way. By recognizing different shapes and sizes of plants, mingled and tangled, and still maintaining their own growing directions toward light, she finds herself trying to identify simple truth and wisdom in the phenomenal cycle of nature

The nature-inspired paintings are more in the manner of a portrait, rather than a landscape. What draws her attention in nature is an individual subject with its immediate surroundings that suggest a unique story, a trace of time and struggle. While Jae’s painting is representational, she finds the motives both from real life and imagination. They are either simply depicted as a state of being or situated as a metaphor, as a means of self-reflected expression. Her aspiration is to bring out the mood and the sentiment that touches a viewer’s emotion. The textures and subtle monotone palette seems to be influenced by her flair in designing textiles and also her pursuit of finding serenity and simplicity.