New Art at Lavendera

Lavendera invites you to meet their new featured artist…

Lavendera Massage new art is the paintings of Jennifer Elise, Come meet her on Friday Night July 20th from 7 pm to 9 pm.

Jennifer moved to Friday Harbor seven years ago after living in Nevada, Texas and Arkansas.  Her passion for art is rooted in an understanding of the beauty in people and their stories. In her words “A portrait is a biography of the person captured in one moment.  Every line, brush stroke, item of clothing or object included in the work has a meaning in the individual’s story.”

Becoming a professional artist was an unexpected journey for Jennifer.  Beginning with a degree in Accounting, a career as an Internal Auditor for a bank; then becoming a “bored housewife” buying a set of paints and reading as much about art and it’s beautifully intricate history. Soon neighbors were asking her to do portraits for them.  Some even brought up the idea of her putting them up for auction. Eventually taking action on her neighbor’s encouragements, Jennifer put her artwork up for auction.

Prices for her artwork were set per year by auction value. Portraits at that time were life sized, black and white, charcoal and graphite. Ms. Elise was active with many charities and museums.  This included doing a portrait for Oscar De La Hoya and his inner city foundation and a commissioned portrait for Anthony Zuiker, the creator/producer of CSI.

In addition to her work as a commissioned portrait artist, Jennifer has worked as an art instructor teaching at Faith Lutheran School in Summerlin, Las Vegas, private art instruction, and teaching seminars. After moving to Friday Harbor, Jennifer has taken a break from the pressure of commission portraits and has been enjoying creating work that she is inspired to do, rather than told to do. This has opened an exciting new phase of creativity; moving towards mixed media, using some color, and often smaller formats rather than life size.

Most of Jennifer’s work is owned by her clients in other parts of the country and is in private homes. It is not often that more that two or three pieces of her work are shown together. In this show you will see a few portraits of individuals in Jennifer’s life, along with new artwork of people from a creative side of Jennifer’s work.  These new creative portraits include a work called “Athena” and a few based on silent film actresses “because they say volumes just with their eyes”.

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