Against water, foliage, shadow and shifting light, the white bird symbol becomes more than a subject, it's a place for the eye to rest, and a quiet source of illumination within the painting.
Created intuitively and increasingly from gesture, memory and feeling, White Birds explores stillness, movement and the small moments in nature that seem to hold something larger.
Held In Light
A continuing series of oil paintings
by artist Jessica Bernert
THE SERIES
In these paintings, the landscape is allowed to loosen. Water becomes reflection and implied... Foliage dissolves into color and blur. Birds occupy the atmosphere rather than sitting apart from it.
I am interested less in describing the natural world exactly, and more in capturing the sensation of encountering it — the feeling of bright white birds across dark water, a figure resting at the edge of a pond, light appearing where you weren't looking for it...
The white bird has become a recurring presence in my work: sometimes solitary, sometimes paired, sometimes nearly disappearing into the landscape, but always symbolic.
Each painting begins differently, but I am following the same question:
How little can I explain, while still allowing the painting to feel alive?
