Jenny Kruger

Jenny Kruger

“I spent seven years of my life in Utah constructing robots and lighthouses from a box of junk I received one early childhood Christmas. At age seven I was sent to school in Mexico, where I was taught manners by an aunt whose Belgian and Spanish parentage made her a misfit in Mexican society. At age eight I lived aboard a sailboat, sailing the Atlantic coast of the United States in the company of my family, as well as Madonna’s Immaculate Collection and Dvorak’s New World Symphony. The daughter of a Mexican mother and an Irishman, in a home defined by familiar sounds, tastes, and smells rather than location, my non-traditional upbringing makes me question the innate and environmental influences that compose the individual. Unable to isolate a single defining location, event, or circumstance, I view each person as the sum of all events that shaped her character. Each of us views our surroundings from the point of view of our experience. The landscapes I paint are my perspective on mine. When I see Nebraska, my current home, I see beauty, mystery, power, and wealth. I feel awe and tremendous pride in calling Nebraska home. Yet, it is from my vantage point as an outsider, an immigrant, that I observe my new home. The landscapes I paint are artificial and fantastical, intended to seduce. They are metaphors for my experience as a foreigner in a foreign land.”

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