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
Jill McLennan is a professional painter and teaching artist who has been living in Oakland for 22 years. She works for the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. She is an active member in her neighborhood, Jingletown, creating and organizing public art and beautification projects; and has her studio at Jingletown Art Studios. She is currently working on a large-scale public art project with the city of Emeryville. As an artist and teacher, she is deeply invested in protecting her environment, inspiring youth, and spreading hope and joy into the world.