Jennifer Payne
About Jennifer Payne
Jennifer Payne was born in Silver Springs, MD in 1971. At a young age, she and her family moved to Myrtle Beach, SC where she began riding horses and drawing constantly. She resided there until attending college at Columbia College in Columbia to study art. In the mid-90’s she transferred to Ringling College of Art where she graduated on the National Dean’s list earning her BFA with an emphasis in painting. During this time, she also studied art abroad at the Art School of the Aegean in Samos, Greece for three months.
Since then she has won numerous awards in nationally accredited juried shows and was named an emerging artist to watch by Southwest Art magazine.
Today she lives and works in Orlando, FL and has been represented by galleries in Santa Fe, NM; Naples, FL; Beaufort, SC; St Augustine, FL; Estes Park, CO; Boulder, CO; and Orlando, FL.
My work is completely intuitive and spontaneous. I rarely know what a painting is going to look like until completion. Instead, I let it flow into its own narrative that I enjoy being constantly surprised by. I allow myself to paint in a few different styles. Sometimes the work is a tighter realistic portrait with fun expressive hair, and other times its completely free using any and everything to paint with: a palette knife, the brush handle of my brush, my fingers, cardboard, a squeegee, anything that seems fun to move the oil paint around. I prefer working on wood because I can sand it, scratch it, scrape it, I love the tactile feel of it. My work is meant to instill positive feelings to the viewer and hopefully have them share in the freedom and joy I feel creating the paintings.
I graduated on the National Dean’s list with a BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design with an emphasis in painting in 1997. In the summer of 1996, I had the amazing opportunity to study art abroad at the Art School of the Aegean in Samos, Greece for three months. I was honored to be named one of the 21 under 31 Emerging Artist of the year by Southwest Art Magazine in 2003. I was recently awarded the Level Three Master Painter award for the Woman in the Arts the “Genius of Women” juried exhibition and an Award of Distinction for the “Creativa” Women Creating Art juried exhibition. My work has been represented by numerous galleries located in Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Florida, and South Carolina. I now reside in Orlando, Florida where I paint full time in my studio and continue to show both locally and nationally.