Jeannette Scollard’s paintings are often mysterious, sometimes eerie, frequently fanciful visions of other galaxies and planets.  They employ a calm angularity, stark edges and a dream-like quality which is arresting, intellectual and invites the viewer to explore. In essence, Jeannette’s paintings depict the Architecture of Nature, distilled down to its essentials, the “frozen music” of the components of planetary life

 

Her landscapes provide compelling views of uninhabited vistas, vaguely familiar but unreal.  “I do not want to paint anything that can be photographed,” she says. “I depict a separate personal landscape, a private world.” Jeannette creates fresh new worlds with familiar shapes and colors, but unique domains, one viewers can inhabit without preconceptions.  Indeed, one senses that the rules may be somewhat different in the vistas she depicts. 

 

Jeannette juxtaposes the familiar with the austere. The brilliant sunlight, ocean and deserts of Southern California, its dazzling blue waters and golden sand, inspire her canvases. Her delicate green Elysian fields reflect her native Tennessee.

 

Some of her paintings are provocative and erudite, others are simple festive celebrations of Spring and renewal.  Others initially appear bleak, almost post-apocalyptic: Upon acquaintance they become strangely serene and inviting.

 

Jeannette works primarily with acrylics on canvas, occasionally oil over acrylic.  Her work is realistic in a surreal way.  She describes herself as a self-styled Neo-Surrealist.   “My dreams are painted by Giorgio di Chirico,” she says.   

 

Jeannette strives to bring a sophisticated cerebral quality to her canvas, restrained and direct, with joyful colors.