Portrait of the Artist: Jenny Bloomfield

We spoke with the Bay Area artist about life, layers and landscapes

When did you start painting?
I was always drawing—it was very much part of my life as a child. When I was 17 I went to art school and I was probably 18 when I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

My first interest was abstract painting. Abstraction was pretty strong in London at that point but just as I started art school there was a real shift and a rejection of the style. So I was strongly encouraged to work from the model and to work from life. It was a great education and I’m very glad that that happened. But my interest was put on hold while I did the more conventional training.

After three years of art school training I returned to experimenting with abstraction. The work that I’m doing now is actually very true to what I started with in an odd sort of way. I went through many different phases—but this show is very close to where I started.

What inspired the work in this show?
I had done landscapes at art school—they were abstracted landscapes but they were built up of many, many lines and the scale of them is very much what I’m doing now. I remember a tutor coming up to me and saying “this is what you are going to make your mark with” and pointed at these drawings. I was just thinking about that the other day; I looked at these drawings and was reminded of that moment.

The works in the show are small abstract paintings. I showed in Texas a couple years ago and I drove there—from California to Texas. The paintings in the show are my memories of these landscapes I saw. But they’re very abstract.

Are you often inspired by landscapes?
Well it’s a many layered process; this was actually something new for me. It was very American—the landscape—the paintings are very much about the scale of the landscape in this country. It was very exciting for me to see that. Often I go out and look at something but to be able to translate it into paint doesn’t always work. Something got under my skin about this landscape.

How would you describe your relationship with your work?
I was reading this poem the other day and there was a line in it that went Is this me, Is this my life. I realized that when I’m in the studio and I’m working, that’s never a question. I never have to ask that question when I’m working.

Read a review of Jenny's show at the Don Soker Gallery here and have a look at more of her work on her website.