JACQUELINE SFERRA RADA

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I‘am inspired by my immediate surroundings:  landscape, architecture seascape, skies or an object …all that convey a unique quality not only in their own appearance but in how they  reflect surroundings and project unique energy in that context.  It’s that impression that remains and asks to be recorded. My media includes acrylic glazes on gessoed paper and pastel on paper.  My work, while grounded in reality, draws on the aesthetic traditions of minimalism, realism and remembrance art. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to evoke realms of the imagination. I seek to establish a link between reality and imagination based on my interior response to a subject....create a place where fiction and reality balance...well known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. In my exploration of landscape I strive to amplify the astonishment of the viewer by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil, poetic images which convey traces of recognition and alienation. My subject matter can be seen as a diary of locations visited which convey both a nostalgic memory of the simplicity and restorative effects of nature which have become increasingly overlooked in lieu of technology and as a future documentary comparison of the marring effects that industry and commerce cumulatively has on the landscape. The sparse style and subtle tones of each work reflect my deep bond to the vastness and simplicity of nature which I attempt to translate from the purely material to the realm of the transcendental with simple shapes and a layering of transparent tones.

A native New Yorker, I live and work in NYC with a studio in Long Island City and am active in that community of artists. My formal art studies began after graduation from high school at The Brooklyn Museum Art School, followed by a B.A. in Fine Arts, cum laude, from Hunter College, NYC.  Over past years I have been invited to participate in the Master Painting Program IV at Long Island University/Southampton campus, the A.I.R. program at the Nantucket School of Art & Design in Massachusetts, was awarded a three week residency at Cil Rialaig Ireland, a month in an interactive A.I.R.program in Puglia, Italy and subsequently  selected as a fellow in the BAU Institute residency program in Puglia.  I am actively involved in the NYC art community as a board member of two artist-run organizations, i.e. serving as Secretary to Artists Talk On Art, a long running panel discussion program and as President of The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, a historic organization founded in the 1940s.  I am also a member of the National Association of Women  Artists and Women In The Arts Foundation.  My work is in many private collections.