Jessica Parker Foley's Projects

MFA Student

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2020

Artist Statement:

Jessica Parker Foley’s abstract landscape paintings are reperformances of intertidal ecosystem behaviors. Her largest works are in oil on panels, but she also uses gouache, watercolor, wax, and resin. By using the techniques of action painting alongside direct observation of the natural world, she creates work that mimics the world around her. Foley’s paintings function with the same behaviors and inclinations of living systems: they do not mirror phenomenal nature, they are phenomenal nature.

Biography:

Jessica Parker Foley is an artist, naturalist, and educator living and working in Portland, Maine. Jessica grew up in New Hampshire playing in the woods, scrambling on rocks, and falling into frog ponds. She earned her BA in Environmental Humanities at Sterling College in the heart of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. She has been teaching art and ecology for five years on the coast of Maine to people of all ages and abilities. Her painting practice is grounded in close observation, alchemy, natural history, and material. In May 2020 she will graduate from Maine College of Art with a MFA in Studio Art.