Jennifer Austin

Jennifer is an emerging artist who was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. Art was always her passion. Although she never found herself in a position where she could focus on it full-time or make a career of it, there have been various different stages in her life where she felt compelled to go back and immerse herself in the creative process, if and when she could find the time. In 2020, Jennifer decided she was ready to begin sharing her work with the public.

All of her current pieces are medium-to-larger scale drawings on paper using charcoal and erasure marks. She uses powdered charcoal, vine charcoal, pressed charcoal, and charcoal pencils as well as several types of erasers creating a variety of different marks on the paper. 

Each drawing is autobiographical in that it represents a point in time where she was captivated by a place or object that she observed in nature. Jennifer takes photographs as she explores the natural world, then works directly from the images she captured.  Nature is therapeutic for her, and she is motivated by the feelings that emerge when seeing these places and objects again, remembering how they moved her at the time she was there. She enjoys reflecting on the impact these scenes had on her as she dissects and replicates every shadow, highlight, and detail, ultimately bringing the drawing to life. 

She knows that her subject matter is truly one point in time, never to be seen in that exact state again. Sadly, all of these places and objects will cease to exist. The scene or object she captured is a fleeting moment of beauty, a part of history by the time her drawing has been completed. Jennifer’s ultimate goal is to replicate this ethereal beauty and allow it to live on through her drawings while nature as we know it becomes a distant memory.