Jessica Scriver is a young artist in Burlington, Vermont.  With a background in biology, her work is inspired by the colors, textures, and forms of nature: the fissures of marble and granite, the shapes and shadows of outer space, the pigments of an undersea environment, or the hidden world of microscopic creatures.  She typically paints in acrylic, often incorporating textural elements such as sand, yarn, glass lenses, or encaustic wax.  EarthDeco is currently exhibiting 14 of Jessica's works, all of which are available for purchase, with prices ranging from $384 to $960.

Maps

I started painting on maps because I liked the contrast of the linearity of the map embedded in a less rigid, expressionistic interpretation of space. To me, this contrast represents the broader idea that reality is much more dynamic than our understanding of it could ever be. A map is a model of place. It tells us a lot of information, but the place itself is ever changing. The neat, clean lines of cartography afford no predictions of the actual messier business of finding your way through space. We cannot conjure an image of a place in our minds by looking at a map alone. It is only after we have been there that we can associate our memories of the place with the markings on a map.Lines of latitude and longitude are arbitrarily assigned to existing real space (I would call this an imposed order). Rarely would we answer the question “where am I?” with coordinates because we cannot relate to these numbers unless we know what they represent. We could more readily conjure an image in our mind of a place given a familiar zip code, but again, if we are not familiar with the zip code, it would not be a good descriptor of place. Some of the paintings are titled with zip codes and coordinates not to exclude the viewer from understanding the painting, but because these codes have as strong a relation to the painting as they do to the real place.We are much more familiar with using names to define a place. Due to our very strong associations with names, however, they too are limited in their ability to describe place. In World View Trip “tik” lenses bring into focus three places on the world map: Iraq, Korea and The United States. Currently we would have strong associations with these names that would immediately call to mind war. The largest lens brings The United States into focus, which might be interpreted as a commentary on the relative power of the three countries, but also the US is simply larger geographically. Take the names away, and we might better see that in these places, people are raising their children, eating, sleeping, experiencing sunrise and sunset, viewing mountains, oceans and desert. Despite very different philosophical worldviews, we share a common human experience represented by the single landscape spanning the three panels. By highlighting the names of these places, we are often limited by our simple association with the name. The reality of a place is much less rigid than our understanding of it.

Fissures - Works inspired by Vermont geology

This body of work is inspired by the colors and furrowed textures found in fossils and rock fissures. In the painting process, I thought about simulating the forces that created the rocks by building layers, scratching the surface, and in some cases, allowing pigments to mingle like molten rock. The idea is simply the inspiration and a launching point for exploration of the materials. The work in many ways evolved beyond the original intent.