Biography

Jill Lear is a painter whose primary subject and inspiration are trees in the landscape as a means of transcribing not only the experience of being in, and thinking about Nature but also the way in which we process the world around us. Jill’s large-scale works on paper have been exhibited in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Austin. Her work has been acquired by the permanent collections at One World Trade Center, NY, Wright State University Art Museum Dayton, OH as well as the Philip Isles Collection, NY. Jill trained formally at the New York Studio School NY, NY and holds degrees from both Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX as well as The Chambre Syndicale of Haute Couture in Paris, France. She is currently at work on a series called “Urban Sprawl: Trees in Cities”

It starts with a single tree in the landscape; assigned its latitude and longitude. Then the investigation begins. A transcription of not only the experience of being in and thinking about Nature, but also about the way in which we process the world around us, literally. From the particular, the place itself: a topographic study involving measurement, proportion, negative space, positive forms. To the general: the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself, territory, light, space, sound.

Then, by subtraction, painting the experience of being there, letting only the major lines and colors of the landscape remain until, like the tree, its significance survives. A kind of modern map of an old world. And like maps, the paintings invite investigation into their white spaces by what they suggest and by what they hide.

— Jill Lear