Jenny Brillhart

About the Artist

Jenny Brillhart finds subjects for her exquisitely rendered paintings in unexpected and often overlooked places, materials and scenes plucked from everyday life that arrest her attention. Photographed and assembled in collages or made into three-dimensional arrangements in the studio, the commonplace become subjects for her spare, elegant compositions. Painted in mostly muted tones with considered notes of color, light and shadows play a dominant role, lending an atmosphere of stillness and calm to her work. The influence of Shaker design and craftsmanship runs deep, as do the Precisionist paintings of Charles Scheeler. Her masterly mark-making defines shape, space, and gravity.

Brillhart received her BFA from Smith College, Northampton, MA, and MFA in painting from The New York Academy of Art, with additional studies at The Art Students League, New York, NY. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kuckei + Kuckei Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL; and numerous other solo and group exhibitions throughout Maine, Florida, Germany, and Spain. In 2019, Brillhart's work was included in the New England Biennial Exhibition at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, and in 2017, in the two-person exhibition Temporality: Jenny Brillhart & Sara Stites at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Blue Hill, ME. By Suzette McAvoy for Dowling Walsh Gallery