Jenny Beard is a painter working within contemporary painting, and her process is built upon automatic drawing, using digital tools to create and manipulate sketches. Abstract imagery is used to explore optical space, depth, and flatness. The work is open ended and explorative, dealing with the paradox of appropriating abstract marks for abstract paintings. During this mimetic experience, the work could be read as representational.

When approaching the work, Jenny is interested in gestures and marks – and when they become signs. Marks are ambiguous, whereas a sign directs us, informs us. Part of her practice involves pushing paint between gesture and sign. What happens if a mark is isolated – If it is scaled up, repeated, or a pattern is made of it?

Digital methods are embraced in Jenny’s practice, but the work is always finished traditionally and meticulously. Painting doesn’t die; instead digital exploration opens up new ways of seeing and laying paint, which creates a refreshing relationship between artist and painting.

Text is used in the work as a form of protest, presented as single words or ramblings. There is a conversational tone, dealing with issues and observations of being a working-class northern women in the arts, but also an undertone of self-deprecation and humour. The paintings are a way of ‘testing the waters’ of self expression, as the artist comes to terms with and moves away from their reserved traits.