The daughter and granddaughter of Italian immigrants I was born in Newark, New Jersey. My folks died when I was young, eight and nine years old. That made education after high school a bit uncertain, but I did win a Mercury Monterey in a church raffle in February of my senior year and decided I could at least apply to one school. I thought that if I got in it would be a sign from God that I would somehow afford it! And so I did. I enrolled in William Patterson College of New Jersey, now William Patterson University, in the early 70s during the gas crisis that saw us lining up at the pumps on odd and even days according to our license plate number. After chauffeuring as many of my friends to and from school as possible that last semester, upon graduation I traded the Merc on a Volkswagen Bug and drove myself to college and work where I took a double major, a Bachelor of Education in Art and Waitressing!
Within my undergraduate art education studies, painting instructor Dr. David Raymond was instrumental to my development as an artist generally and as a painter. He was sensitive to my way of drawing and encouraged my own visual voice. He valued painting from life and copying. Hard-edged tonal paintings were all the rage, however, and we spent what seemed like countless hours premixing colour based on a gray scale before we put a brush to canvas. Hard-edged tonal painting was, like the clothing fashion of the time, an Armani approach to painting. I did well and it did contribute to my understanding of colour theory, but it really wasn’t for me. Still searching for my painterly voice it was Richard Mayhew, during graduate school at Penn State University that unleashed my Versace soul. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Continue Bio
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Take a minute and see where my work is featured in local spaces: Jennifer Pazienza Art Studio, Keswick Ridge, NB Canada’s Wescover Map