biography
Jenifer Bacon is an oil painter living in Horseshoe Bay, Texas. She recently moved to the Texas Hill Country from Colorado. She was happy to leave her snow shovel and bitter cold winters behind. Over the years she has lived in many different places; California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. She’s found the rolling hills, oak trees and the warm nights in the hill country very inspiring to her work.
She grew up in Laguna Beach, California, living in a home overlooking the ocean with stunning views of the land and sea that had the perfect name “Top of the World”. She had the opportunity to observe birds of prey and ravens that soared over the cliffs. It greatly influenced her art and thinking. But, even in this lovely setting she would have traded anyone to live on a ranch riding horses all day and being a cowgirl.
After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a degree in Studio Art, she traveled throughout Europe experiencing the culture and the art. Eventually, she ended up working for many years as a digital artist specializing in technology startups.
She currently lives in Horseshoe Bay, Texas with her two dogs, a cat and one horse. For fun she rides competes in reined cow horse events and enjoys hiking with her dog.
Why I paint?
STATEMENT
I’ve always been drawn to vastness of the western landscape. Empty roads that seem to go on forever. Big skies filled with white clouds reaching up into the heavens. Nostalgic stories of adventure and hardship. For many years, my subject matter was portraits of horses and donkeys in a beautiful western landscape with the intention of capturing the emotional experience of an animal. One year I was fortunate to go on an adventure to photograph wild horses, 70 miles outside the nearest town in Colorado. It was an amazing experience to see the social behavior of the horses in a wild setting close-up.
This experience sparked a desire to explore my work on a deeper, more conceptual level. I became intrigued by how animals perceive the world from their own unique vantage points. How might they see the landscape around them? What colors do they see, and what might they perceive that we cannot? How do their sensory experiences shape a reality so different from our own?
My process starts with taking lots of pictures. I often use an iPhone because it’s usually handy, but I also have a Nikon D750 that produce better quality photos. I also have a GoPro and a Pivo that have proven to be useful in visualizing different way of visualizing. I begin my painting on the computer putting together various images into one. Basically, the paintings are makeup of many different photos. I use Photoshop, Topaz, and different filters. I’ve used AI tools to help me visualize what they might be seeing. I paint directly from my iPad that is on a stand. I often take picture of the painting as I progress to either check proportions or just play with the image.
In this evolving journey, my aim is to push beyond human perceptions and open a window into an alternate reality—an attempt to see the world as another being might. I want to reiterate that the paintings come from my imagination and are not reality. We don’t really know how an animal sees. But I hope they sparks your curiosity.