Lauren Ennist is February's Featured Artist in JerseyArts.com Artist Gallery

(Burlington, NJ) –Lauren Ennist of Hillsdale, NJ has been selected as the featured artist in the JerseyArts.com Artist Gallery, an online gallery which showcases a different New Jersey artist of distinction each month. Her art is available for viewing at http://jerseyarts.com/ArtistGallery.aspx.

From her Artist's Statement: "Lauren's oil paintings depict family, friends and the occasional unidentified person. These modern portraits benefit from a kind of hyper vigilance of the process of painting. She experiences her paintings through their 'subtle nuances, veiled meanings, minor changes in facial and physical expressions...' Lauren uses this vigilance to seize and codify her subject's state of mind. Her paintings straddle the genres of portrait and figurative art, with subjects that are either unaware of or engaged with the viewer.

Lauren lives within the modern, industrialized framework of New Jersey and her visual reality is the edge of a rectangular canvas. She chooses to push figures close to the canvas surface, enlarge their scale so they dominate the space; the backgrounds contain the rudiments of geometric modernity. Compositions are taut and carefully calculated in relation to the canvas' edge. The space between the figure and edge, 'the void,' is a carefully constructed element of the composition."

Lauren was part of the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour this past October. Her work is currently on display in the 24th International Juried Exhibition at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit. She has also shown at The Hun Gallery, NYC; Fieldstone Fine Art, Ramsay, NJ; Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL; Torpedo Art Center, Alexandria, VA; and the Brodsky Gallery, EST, Princeton, NJ. Her work will also be displayed through April 2010 as part of METRO 26, a touring multi-artist gallery show presented by City Without Walls.

ABOUT THE JERSEYARTS.COM ARTIST GALLERY

Each month, the JerseyArts.com Artist Gallery showcases a different New Jersey artist's work. Since its inception in 1999, the JerseyArts.com Artist Gallery has featured over 150 New Jersey artists. Artists are selected by JerseyArts.com based on a variety of different criteria including but not limited to whether: the artist is working and living in New Jersey, has an event taking place in a New Jersey venue, and/or has earned special recognition from a New Jersey organization/program during month they are featured. For more information on the Artist Gallery, please visit http://jerseyarts.com/galleryinfo.asp.

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ABOUT DISCOVER JERSEY ARTS

Discover Jersey Arts (DJA) is a cosponsored project of the ArtPride New Jersey Foundation and New Jersey State Council on the Arts  working in partnership with other cultural service organizations statewide including the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, South Jersey Cultural Alliance, New Jersey Network and New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism. The project’s mission is to increase the awareness of and participation in the arts in New Jersey.  JerseyArts.com supports this mission by providing a central clearinghouse of information on New Jersey’s cultural scene.

Since its launch in the summer of 2000 following more than two years of research and development into assessing the needs of its constituents, DJA has developed a wide variety of programs and initiatives to support our state’s cultural community while providing resources to the public.  For more information visit DJA on the web at http://www.jerseyarts.com.