Regard this fleeting world like this: Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn, like bubbles on a fast-moving stream, like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass, like a candle flickering in a strong wind, echoes, mirages and phantoms, hallucinations, and like a dream.

— The Eight Similes of Illusion from the Prajna Paramita Sutras- The Buddha

Jenn Shifflet is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the poetic realms of luminosity, color, and the fleeing qualities of life, as mirrored by reflections of the natural world. She uses light both as symbol and medium for exploring the inner world and the expansive beauty of nature. Her work speaks of dream-like realms, fleeting moments of radiant light, and interconnection between self and nature. Themes of sky, luminous inner worlds, reflection, layered time, alchemy, and the feminine permeate Shifflet’s work.

Shifflets materials often work with light to create moments of perception: reflective, transparent, iridescent, and refractive pigments, mirrors and glass. Mediums made fluid through watery pours and drips elevate a feminine wisdom that wears down and tempers hard edges. Time unfolds slowly through endlessly layered transparent compositions that create a saturated, spacious, and luminous depth through auras of gradated color.

The art historical influences of Shifflet’s work include Northern Romanticism, the California Light and Space movement, Chinese and Japanese traditional landscape painting, spiritual abstraction, the studio glass movement. Personal influences reflected in her work are a yogic Buddhist practice, daily walks at dusk, ecofeminism, a near-death experience in her early 20’s and her history as a jeweler. These influences have led to a visual language of a beauty that recognizes the fragility and fleetingness of life. In a fast paced world that is burdened by division and disconnection, her work inspires us to pause, and slow down for a moment of contemplation.