Jen Gash
I am an award-winning, life-long artist, exploring physical and psychological landscapes and the complexity of human doing.
Willing to embrace serendipidity and emergence in the painting process, and excited by notions of adaptation, resilience, loss, a range of oddities.
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Neurodiversity: assets and liabilities in a creative life. by Jen Gash
Read on Substack“Jen has something else and it’s that thing that art has. It’s something unquantifiable. It moves us in a way we didn’t know we could be moved and it opens up a whole new way of seeing the world and that is quite remarkable for an artist to be able to do that” Tai-Shan Shierenberg
“What I find most compelling in your work is your relationship with paint itself. There is a genuine openness in how you allow it to behave, an understanding that control and release can coexist. That tension feels central to the strength of the practice. You set conditions, as you describe, and then allow something to unfold. That sense of ‘Wu Wei’ is not just conceptual, it is visible in the surface” Kurt Beers @beerslondon
Artist Statement
Like many artists, my relationship with painting has been turbulent at times. Yet my love of paint—and my deep need to create and investigate the world visually—has remained constant.
Painters often strive to control, contain, or manipulate their medium, but paint resists such authority. Its unpredictable, fluid nature makes it an ideal partner for exploring the equally uncontrollable natural world. In my practice, I often set up conditions or parameters that allow the paint to act on its own terms. What emerges often aligns with the concept of Wu Wei—a state of spontaneous, effortless action that mirrors nature without force, ego, or anxiety. This is sometimes a starting point or sometimes occurs later in my process.
I am currently drawn to themes of transformation and instability: how landscapes shift over time with and without human influence; landscapes as psychological terrains; the fragility and peculiarities of human beings; the tension between being and doing; and the ways we engage—or disengage—from the world around us. I incorporate elements from real places but also construct imagined landscapes, allowing both observation and invention to shape the work.
I work primarily in oils and acrylics on varied surfaces and at multiple scales, choosing materials that best support the interplay between intention and chance.