J. Wren Supak

Artist Statement

I am an abstract artist, working in painting and digital media, depending on the project. I work non-representationally at the intersection of intimate and shared experience. The process includes research, such as of history, then responding materially—a practice that frees me to clarify information subjectively. Even when linked to a broader context, I am personally tied to the subject.

Sometimes I recycle items like photos or my grandmother’s wallpaper into the art. Imitating life, I make both intentional, and unplanned gestures, such as pouring, brushing, removing, or blowing. Light, framing or gesture recur throughout my work. I have studied the work of Color Field painters whose circumstances frame through context. Being intentionally anachronistic by building on the lineage of select ab-ex artists while concerning myself with how that period intersected with the world, including my family history, I subsume their style. I differentiate myself by illuminating personal, social, and cultural experiences.

My entire body of work, including subject, process, gesture, ruminating on history, storytelling through abstraction - including researching transitional justice - drive at narrative through allegory and metaphor. Paint and mark, demonstrate the physicality of interpretation. The point of the abstraction is to avoid the didactic nature of narration through a re-imagination of experience. Please look close, it is all there. 

About the Artist

Jennifer “Wren” Supak (b. 1974) was born in Virginia Beach, VA. She is a two-dimensional artist working in painting because it is physical, and, digital video and photography, depending on the project. She grew up in the US, Canada, Denmark, and England. Wren has earned both a Master in Fine Arts visual art and a Master in Human Rights on art’s role in peacemaking. She has delivered talks to diverse audiences on storytelling, art, and justice including; the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and the College Art Association. Her work has exhibited in The US, Hungary, Colombia, Art Basel Miami, Mini Video Art Festival in Budapest 2019 and around the US. Wren is the art gallery director at Northwest Florida State College. Her art is represented by AS Artists Studios.