Open Studio spotlight: Jenna Rae Tooley
“Jenna Rae Tooley paints the moments that we have when we are most alive,” says professor Stephen Knudsen of his standout former student, who received a grant for representational painting from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in 2019.
To see Tooley’s paintings is to grasp what Knudsen means. Her uncanny oils frequently depict children on the radiant cusp between innocence and experience, often in bucolic settings that reflect her own upbringing in Novato, California, north of San Francisco. The work displays a profound sensitivity to light, in both the mystical and physical senses.
This weekend, Tooley (B.F.A., painting, 2020) is a featured artist at the semi-annual SCAD Open Studio. The all-virtual event allows enthusiasts and collectors to peruse over 1000 works by SCAD students, alumni, and faculty, including Tooley paintings like “New Light,” an intimate self-portrait, and the large-scale narrative work “Engulfed in Flames.”
When speaking of Tooley’s incandescent depictions, professor Knudsen invokes another great artist from San Francisco: Jack London. “London called it the ‘sheet of flame’, a place where one feels ‘so alive that there is a forgetfulness that one is alive.’ When Jenna reflects on those moments in a painting like ‘The Last Night of Summer,’ she delivers with enigma and visceral crush. This is the language of the beautiful precariousness of remembrance.”
“I have a memory book I’ve created,” Tooley explains. “I draw little scenes in crayon. They’re rudimentary, but I can get the essence of a memory down into this book. Then I can create a realist painting that’s based in these memories, so it functions like an archive. Someday I’ll have hundreds of these books that I can flip through to review my collected memories.”
Tooley sites her studio classes with Knudsen as crucial, as well as coursework like Business and Professional Practices for Fine Arts (SFIN 413) with professor Vanessa Platacis. In combination, they helped define her forward-facing identity. “Those classes emphasized something engrained in me: document your work,” Tooley says. “That means with proper lighting and a proper camera, and building an online presence that shows your evolution and your best work.”
Tooley’s own website presents her multi-dimensionality: The fine artist is also an accomplished production designer and director. (Step into the world of her short film Fuzzite Fighters.) “I’m so visual that if something doesn’t make sense visually, it doesn’t really click in my brain,” she says.
This summer, Jenna will relocate from Savannah to Atlanta, the Southern capital of the filmmaking universe, to focus on her career as a production designer. Atlanta also offers significant infrastructure in the fine art world for the young painter. In the meantime, her visions come to life in her paintings, those oil-on-canvas, memory-fed sheets of flame.
SCAD Open Studio, curated by SCAD Art Sales, takes place Fri., Sat., and Sun, April 30-May 2, 2021.
