Jennifer Mercede was born in Long Beach, CA and grew up in Connecticut. At a young age Jennifer began making art, inspired by her grandmother, a free-spirited watercolorist. She would spend hours making hundreds of handmade floral greeting cards and loved when she had the house to herself to turn the music up and work on a creative project.
After graduating with a BA in Painting from Western Washington University in 2001, Jennifer took a few years to live life, Bohemian style, enthusiastically checking off : hitch-hiking to Alaska and back, Heli-skiing, leading Wilderness trips in the Everglades, living in her station wagon on Key West, renting out a corner of a corner of a Brooklyn artist Loft and selling handmade jewelry on the streets of Manhattan.
In 2004 she landed in Portland and started to think about her future, and her career. So, just as she had decided to go to college for art simply because she enjoyed doing it, she similarly decided to make a living though art, also cause she likes making it! (go figure) She began to show in small coffee shops around Portland and with the loving support of a great community, including other artists, art buyers and art world professionals like Heidi McBride Gallery who first offered to represent her, Jennifer truly began to emerge as an artist. Now her work is well known throughout Portland and is owned by over hundreds of people throughout the country as well as internationally.
Her primarily abstract paintings consist of free flowing text, bright color fields, and crazy energetic doodling. Internally guided they involve letting go, taking big risks and trusting that there is no such thing as a mistake. They are meant to enjoy and motivate. She is inspired by color, children’s art, life adventures, old school hip hop flavor, graffiti, abstract expressionism, inner spirituality and her creative friends. She looks forward to continuing a life filled with creation, including writing, dancing, singing and creating music as well as all types of performance.
STATEMENT
I started this room last spring during 30 ROOMS. Recently I took a trip to San Francisco and saw a figurative art show. I was so inspired I decided, ‘That’s it! I’m doing figures!’ I’ve wanted to get into figurative work for a while. I’ve dabbled in it and now, I am dabbling in it more. Here in this room you will see a wide variety of figures as an evolution of my mural started last year. Pleased enjoy the crowd!
