Very Strange Days: The Paintings of Jenny Morgan

The root of Morgan’s work starts with the photo shoots that she conducts with her models. This is where the intense bond is formed between artist and subject, and that initial feeling of tension and exposure in her portraits is one that originates from this process. “Asking these people to be vulnerable with me and my lens creates a unique moment that I thrive on throughout the duration of the making the painting. Ironically though, I do see my use of color as a form of clothing or a cover. The color glazing and other techniques that I use, like blurring and sanding, do offer distance between the viewer and the vulnerable, naked subject.” Morgan works directly from her printed photographic references and builds up at least two layers of the painted figure, before she chooses to blur the wet paint, and sand down the dry paint using sandpaper, or apply a think color glaze on top of the figure. These alterations to the realism are her way of departing from the “real” world and placing the subject in a new space.

Concerned with creating a raw and emotionally genuine portrait, her goal is never to flatter. “What I love most about my work is being able to connect with the people in my life in a way not possible by other means,” she says.

Scale, as well as color, is an equally important aspect of Morgan’s work. Some of her paintings feature multiple full-scale bodies on monumental sized canvases, her largest measuring between six-to-eight feet tall and five feet wide. “It’s important for me that the figure be larger than life. I scale up the body so that it feels more than human and outside of daily experience. The size and scale of the painting is always determined by how much space I feel the individual needs to psychically and physically occupy,” she explains. The incorporation of colors like true reds, yellows, blues, and oranges, and graphical elements are picked up subconsciously from her environment in the studio or studies. These graphic qualities are juxtaposed with the more refined components, particularly in the face, hands, and genitals, an overt sexuality that is the most tender aspect of Morgan’s art, especially of her self-portraits. “I understand that I am drawn to the nude not just because of its art historical roots, but also because of my own discomfort with sensuality. It’s a duality—I thrive on the vulnerability of skin and then at moments I feel mortally embarrassed and exposed. I choose to confront the discomfort and explore that which challenges me most.”

Historically, the nude has been used as both an expression of beauty and human qualities, as well as transformed by artists into an aesthetic object.

Morgan’s paintings balance a fine line between the two, both incorporating beautiful aesthetics and design, and elaborating on her subject’s unique complexion. With each new piece, she exercises her abstract voice more. “I feel as though I naturally teeter along many lines and find the quality of the work both frustrating and empowering.

For me, defining individuality in a portrait is to embed the painting with a soul or sensation of a specific person. This individuation is best accomplished with direct eye contact between the subject matter and the viewer,” she says. The concept of the nude’s gaze first became popular with the rise of postmodern philosophy and social theory, namely French intellectual Jacques Lacan’s analysis of the gaze’s role as a mirror of the human psyche. This idea extended into feminist theory, where it can deal with how men look at women—and vice versa, how women look at themselves.

It was a heavy time and I processed everything through the use of color—the intense hues were comforting and stabilizing.