Jill McLennan, Nature's Reckoning
Sept. 8 – Oct. 14, 2023
Jill McLennan’s new body of work explores nature as it is altered through human impact, migration, and climate change. The paintings, drawings, and prints in this exhibition represent stories of human and animal migration, the unhoused in Oakland, and the protectors of the Congolese and Californian forests. We, humans, exist together with animals, plants, insects, and sea life on this planet, Earth. McLennan’s work explores the cycles of the natural world through change, motion, and balance. Depicting people migrating through the uncharted forests of the Darien Gap to undetermined outcomes at the US border and people living on the streets of Oakland, she expresses our common humanity, need for community, and will to survive. Through a variety of mediums, McLennan works and reworks these images creating intimate narratives of nature’s reckoning and humanity’s challenge to stay afloat.
Jill McLennan
is a painter, printmaker and teaching artist who has been living in Oakland, CA for 23 years. She is an active member of her neighborhood Jingletown, creating and organizing public art and beautification projects, and has her studio at Jingletown Art Studios. In 2023, she completed a large-scale public art project with the city of Emeryville, a steel fence depicting local views and shorebirds. Currently, she is focused on printmaking and is exploring several techniques and subjects. This fall, she is an artist in residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. As both an artist and a teacher, she is deeply invested in learning new things, exploring her environment, inspiring youth, and spreading hope and joy into the world.