Drive

Follow

Tread Softly

Shift

Speed Limit

18th and Broadway

Artist Statement

Drive is an exploration of transitional space. I am interested in perception and the ways in which we process sensory stimuli. The paintings portray recognizable symbols juxtaposed with the natural landscape in an environment warped by motion. Strange yet familiar, the imagery is intended to evoke the sense of a place that is in between. I find the act of driving to be symbolic. Other than the obvious metaphor for life as a journey, driving represents the self in auto-pilot awakened by pauses in which we see something beautiful in the mundane.

Paint seems an apt medium to capture the fluidity of light and the magnetic, man-made colors that punctuate the landscape. I am also interested in the contradiction of using a painting (a fixed, monumental tribute that withstands time) to describe an event that is barely visible in real time. The process of painting lends longevity to the happenstance.

Chance has always played a role in my art, and the spontaneity of the photo-taking process is no different. Each click of the shutter plucks an image from the obscurity of the rapidly changing scenery. While sifting through and discarding captured images, I select compelling images saturated with the essence of that moment in time and space. In doing so, I further reassert control over the inundation of external information. In my constructed narrative, I choose that which will be remembered.

Jennifer Bock-Nelson was born in Chicago (1978) but spent most of her early years in Zeeland, Michigan. She earned her BA in art at Houghton College, located in western New York, and graduated with her MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2004. She presently resides in Quincy, Illinois with her husband and two sons.