Jamie Chiarello is a self-taught artist originally from Richmond, Virginia. After a brief stint in NYC, she settled in New Orleans in 2004. Since then she has worked as a street artist, doing portraits and selling paintings in the French Quarter. Although not formally trained, her work is classically inspired and over the years she has taken numerous workshops, studying with a range of artists such as Jonathan Hodge, Alex Kanevsky, Carol Peebles and Karen Offutt. She will probably just keep doing this until she's dead.
Statement
My work exists in the tension between observation and imagination, often drawing from both sources. The places where our choices grow beyond us and we lose control and the places where accidents take us off gaurd and become the basis for a new intention. I'm pretty obsessed with the difference between a planned mark and a random one. I am more naturally at home in being a chaos painter, starting without a reference of any ideas and just poking around to see what's happening. Because of this I believe it's vital for us to steep ourselves in the opposite of our inclinations in order to grow and push tensions to their farthest holding capacities. This is what lead me to classical realism. It is a land I am grateful to visit, but will never be able to live in. The need for focus, the air of refinement and order, is what I would like to carry back into my own work, which often feels like so much chaotic reaching.
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