I am pleased to share that my work will be included in “Terra” at Greenhill Center for NC Art in Greensboro this summer/fall. The exhibit is a survey of work by North Carolina landscape artists running July 25 – November 7, 2026.
From the gallery: “TERRA explores one’s experience of nature through the eyes of thirty of the state’s leading landscape artists. This major survey exhibition focuses on artists inspired by wild spaces untouched by development. National parks, ocean fronts, mountain hollers and wetland retreats are evoked in paintings, works on paper, and fiber art.”
I turned 45 last Saturday and spent the week with my family at Oak Island, NC. Each day I indulged in multiple trips to the beach to run or walk or swim or just jump over waves. I read a lot and caught some of Roland-Garros. It was pretty great!
In the studio I’ve been working on a painting commission of skiers and I think it’s done. I’m starting an intimidating weaving project next, and I’ll share when things are under way and I have images to show.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out my show at the Sawtooth School, it’s up until July 12th. You’ll find drawings, collages, textiles, installation, and video on themes of changing ecology.
Jessica Singerman Collages at Sawtooth School ExhibitSummer has begun! This is “Cold Water.” It’s 30×40 inches oil on canvas and available here.
Since I was in graduate school over 20 years ago and discovered cycling, I’ve tried to reconcile my training as an athlete and my practice as an artist. I think that the energy required to do both comes from a similar place and I’ve tried to figure out how to make riding or running or walking my actual artistic practice with varying degrees of success. There is precedent for this – the English artist Hamish Fulton makes the act of walking the central part of his artistic practice. Through his work he elegantly addresses familiarizing oneself with nature as a way to respect it, and that in turn as a way to address climate change. The sort of artifacts that he makes post walk are also tied to the land he travels through their size, form, and materials, but these things he makes are secondary to the walks, more of a way to share the walks with others in a gallery setting.
I always come back to wanting to make things. Making things is how I understand the world around me and how I express my thoughts in the way that is most intuitive, not in a linear way, but in a way that is more meandering. And while I know that riding bikes, running, and walking inspire my work, making those the actual work, hasn’t felt like enough. It hasn’t satisfied the urge to make things.
When Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina a few weeks ago, less than 100 miles away, and people’s entire lives were swept away and the actual topography of the mountains violently changed in a moment, everything suddenly seemed very ephemeral. Some of the most destructive aspects of climate change were here.
Climate change is something I’ve wanted to address more directly in my work for a long time, but I think all of the attempts I’ve made would be upsetting for a casual gallery goer, and so they’ve never seen the light of day. It’s important to me that my work at the very least not be depressing for those who experience it, so none of my attempts at addressing the ecological crisis have ever hit the mark for me.
The project I’ve been working on using natural dyes to color handkerchiefs for next spring, coupled with another project I’m expanding on (the boulders from my spring exhibit at The Art Gallery at Congdon Yards, which you can see here at approximately 1 minute into this video tour of the show), together start to address nature and ecological issues through textiles. The hankies suspended in the air are each dyed using natural plant and insect derived dyes that have been used throughout history. The boulders on the ground are made by compressing and tightly binding cast off textiles commercially dyed. As you probably know, the fashion industry pollutes through its processing and dyeing of fabrics and uses astonishing amounts of water. It also creates literal mountains of garbage. These projects will be coupled with other sculpture, video, and sound, that I hope can effectively address climate change while keeping true to my values as an artist. I still believe in beauty and dreaming and poetry.
Last weekend on a forest walk with my husband and our son, I noticed all of the acorns on our path. Acorns, along with oak leaves and bark, can be used to make dyes varying in color from yellow, tan, green, brown, and even violet. The three of us collected pieces from the ground, and later that day, my son and I prepared them for dyeing fabric. He used a hammer to smash the acorns as I whittled away the bark, and we put each collection in a jar with water. They’ll soak for a week or so before I can extract the dye. As for the leaves, I poured boiling water on them, left them to sit overnight in a pot, and simmered them in the morning with hankies. After a day, the hankies were various shades of creamy yellow and orange.
While I still am not clear on how to make a walk my artistic practice (maybe I simply need to declare that it is?), the act of walking and collecting plant matter to generate color for my work is deeply satisfying. I’m enjoying all the research on which plants to use for lasting color, how to extract the color, and tangentially all the social history around textiles and natural dyes, which ties into culture and economy.
I’m curious to see where these projects take me.
My son holding some of the acorns we collected on our forest walk (also to be used for their color)Holding oak leaves and branches from which I’ll extract color
A couple weeks ago on a bike ride, we rode by this farm and I knew I had to come back to paint it. It is conveniently located across the road from a water treatment plant, so I planned to park there to get a good view of the farm land.
This morning a friend and I met there to paint, and we had a chance to chat with the guys who run the water treatment plant. This is one of my favorite parts about working in plein air; I often get to meet people who know stories about the land I’m observing, and this morning was no exception. After finishing our paintings, we got a tour of the plant! Fascinating stuff… and I love the OSHA sign that lives in their lab.
When a couple stopped while driving by, they shared with us what they think is another beautiful landscape nearby. And they’re right! It’s a spot I’ve noted many times, and forgot to return with my painting kit. So I know where I’m headed next…
My family had planned to go backpacking last weekend, and I spent the week trying to figure out just the right spot for us: the right distance, difficulty, and weather conditions. A mellow option on Commissary Ridge and up to Mount Mitchell? A strenuous hike over six of the tallest mountains on the East Coast? Or The Seven Sisters, a tough hike near Montreat? By dinner time Friday night, with the predicted weekend weather in the mountains much colder than we’d expected, we decided to cancel our plans and go backpacking at another (warmer) time. Our son is only 11 years old, and while he enjoys backpacking, we want to keep it fun for him. Being out in the elements and cold all weekend didn’t sound like fun.
After all that anticipation though, I was mentally prepared to do something epic. A cycling friend proposed an 80-miler with a big climb on Saturday – perfect! So with some sun and temps in the 50’s and 60’s, a group of us headed out toward Stone Mountain and climbed Oklahoma, a nasty 3-mile long climb with an average grade of 6% and some super steep pitches toward the top. What’s special about this though is that I haven’t had the desire to put in big miles on the bike in a few years. It felt good to want to do that, and although I haven’t put in the on-bike training I would have preferred before a ride like this, I have been doing some long hikes this year. It turns out that the long miles on foot coupled with some short hard rides were enough to be able to complete the 80 miles and feel recovered enough to ride a relaxed 45 miles the next day.
I think what helped a lot was that after over two decades of riding my bike, I have finally learned how to properly fuel up for sustained energy. Marathon training and lots of hiking helped me by learning to rely on more real food rather than “performance” food (bars, gels, and the like).
Sunday was Mother’s Day, and we celebrated with a picnic in one of our favorite spots. We went for a walk afterward and spotted beavers! We stayed for a while spying on them and watching as they silently swam down the creek and made their way over and under fallen logs. They are surprisingly big! On the way out of the woods, I noticed some interesting shapes, textures, and colors around us, and planned to come back with my sketchbook. There seemed to be lots of possibilities for abstraction.
That evening while our son was playing with his Nerf gun, he shot a dart at one of my 6-foot tall paintings in the living room. I’m happy to say the painting survived.
The next day, sketchbook and watercolors in tow, I set up a little camp chair to make some drawings. I made a few thumbnail sketches and color studies, then watched ducks darting around and geese as they strolled with their little ones.
This week in my studio, we found the tiniest mouse I’ve ever seen. After letting it run all over the place for a day and then have a good rest (it chose to sleep under my husband’s desk for the night), I managed to put it in a jar and release it in the backyard. It predictably broke back into our house a few hours later, so I caught it again and drove it down the road to a more appropriate spot (ie: very far away from our house). I placed it near a mountain of kudzu, thinking that would be a good place for a mouse to go on an adventure.
It made me think of one of my favorite childhood books: Comment la souris reçoit une pierre sur la tête et découvre le monde… I don’t know that it was ever published in English, but the title roughly translates to How the mouse gets hit in the head with a rock and discovers the world!
In the book, a young mouse who lives with her parents underground decides to dig a room of her own. As she digs and digs, she eventually breaks surface and sees the outside for the first time! She goes on an adventure and meets new friends: the sun, the moon, stars, wind, clouds… all sorts of natural phenomena. In the end they all give her a little piece of themselves in a little backpack with compartments for everything. She then continues on her way with the sun so they can make new friends together. As you can imagine, I love her backpack loaded up with all sorts of natural ephemera with a neat little spot for everything. That image has always stayed with me.
You can watch a short video where I share this and show some of the beautiful watercolor illustrations in the book on either Facebook or Instagram.
If you live in the Winston-Salem, NC area, Aperture Cinema is featuring my work all month. Before every screening, you’ll see an interview where I talk about my work and what it’s like to work as an artist in this area. Thanks Aperture!
Last month I shared with you that I started painting people again. You can see the first four paintings of the series below. I’m now working on the fifth painting of six I planned to make. After I make six, I’ll decide if I’m going to continue making them. At this point, I’m loving the process, I’m learning a lot and I see no reason to stop working figuratively in the near future. It’s interesting to note that I was primarily painting people until a semester into graduate school when I began exploring abstraction. This was back in 2002, and over the years every time I tried making figurative work again, it just didn’t feel right.
This time feels different. The way I’m approaching painting the figures and establishing their relationship to the spaces around them, the way I’m layering the paint and using color feels like things I’ve been thinking of for the last 2 decades are clicking.
I’m interested in what happens when the figures aren’t looking out at us, when they look away or toward someone or something off the edge of the painting. The paintings feel like a moment within time, like something has just happened before we were privy to the moment in the painting and it will continue beyond the painting. The people occupy outside spaces that are ambiguous, sometimes deep and three-dimensional and other time more geometric and on the surface of the painting. I’m playing with colors, noticing which ones create interesting optical effects, particularly on the depth portrayed in the painting. The paintings are mysterious and a little weird and that feels like the right place for me right now.
Four recent paintings on my studio wall
Looking at the image of my studio above and of the painting Pilot Mountain 1 below, you’ll notice similar colors and compositions. Seeing my work from different periods like this together reminds me that I’ve been interested in the same things visually for a long time. I think it’s the subject matter thats most different.
Pilot Mountain 1 is available from my shop. It’s one of the paintings inspired by my favorite place to walk and run, Pilot Mountain.
Pilot Mountain 1, acrylic and oil on panel, 20 x 20 inches, 2018
Fruit definitely tastes better when you pick it by vineyards on a hike.
Whew! After a trip to France followed by getting sick, I am back in the studio/office.
My husband, our son and I went to France as soon as our son’s school let out in June. We visited family and friends we hadn’t seen since the before-times and went hiking in the Alpes with my brother for a week. We got home after 3 weeks on the road and promptly got sick with Covid – all 3 of us.
I’m starting to feel like myself again though, so I wanted to write about some things we learned in the last month:
Hiking difficulty ratings are off the charts in France. One of my cousins took us hiking near Dijon on the Chemin de Felix Batier. The route we took was marked as Difficult, but we felt prepared since we consider ourselves fairly experienced hikers. We ended up doing what amounted to climbing without ropes. It turns out this Felix Batier character created the trail in the 1950’s to help train alpinists for the difficulties they’d face the Alpes.
Always stop and pick ripe fruit you find during a walk (unless it’s near the ground of course). See the image above of us eating cherries we found along the aforementioned hike.
Stag beetles don’t typically bite unless you accidentally grab them – which is exactly what my son did during one of the climbs on this hike. Luckily he did not fall off the rocky climb. And yes, it hurt like hell. He had the marks to prove it.
Don’t trust the guy at the gear shop who recommends the perfect hike for your family. After telling him what we do and don’t enjoy when hiking and letting him know we had a 9-year old with us, he recommended a hike up the Crête du Vars. Instead of making a loop, we ended up turning around at the summit because we were so terrified by the exposure. When we saw the crest from the bottom, we thought for sure we’d be hiking around it. No, we would be hiking on it. Lesson learned: if you’re so scared that you’re not enjoying the views anymore, it’s time to turn around. Note, this hike was marked as Moderate in the hiking app we used, which is shocking to me given the level of exposure we experienced up there. But I realized that steep (up to 30% grades here) or sustained climbing doesn’t add to the difficulty level in France. It’s the technicality of a hike that matters when rating them.
We survived Covid. I think we caught it on the plane ride back Stateside when a woman near us took off her mask before having a coughing fit for 5-minutes. We’re still tired and needing to sleep a lot, but we are ok. I’m also thankful for Zoom which allowed me to teach a workshop virtually rather than in person when I was sick.
Drawing is the best. We knew this already, but I’ve been reminded again as I make drawings and watercolors in my sketchbook. From taking notes and color references, to practicing drawing skills, to trying out new techniques, to figuring out what to do with a painting, the humble sketchbook is the place to do it all. This summer, I’ve been drawing a lot. And my son is old enough to model without moving too much now too. He even likes modeling! See the drawing below to see what my son has been up to…
I am still afraid of everything until I do it once. I’d wanted to try Paris’ bike share program Vélib since I’d heard about it, but hadn’t had the chance to do it yet. Well after a day of walking around the city with my brother, I decided it would be a good idea to ride the 45-min ride back to our apartment by bike. I hadn’t ridden bikes in a city since we lived in Australia, and WOW I had forgotten how full-on city riding is, especially in a place where there are so many things going on at once. Cars, city busses, other cyclists, scooters, motorcycles, pedestrians, trams… the list of possible ways to get hurt goes on. I almost got squished by a bus (my fault entirely) and was afraid to get hit by the eerily silent trams, but thankfully I made it back to home-base in one piece. And it was so fun that I’ll probably do it again next time we’re there.
The Crête du Vars. We were way up there on those rocks.My son making the most of summer and reading in bed
Watercolor painting of our Backpacking gear because I couldn’t resist
I took my 9-year old son on his first backpacking trip last weekend. We were out for 2 nights and covered a total of 22 miles, with plenty of climbing and challenging trail surfaces – and beautiful landscapes to reward us!
We started our adventure by climbing Mount Rogers, VA for a few miles until the path intersected with the Appalachian Trail. Once we got on the AT, it was a different feel than any other trail. There are more people – although it’s remote enough not to be swarmed – and there is a palpable mystique. Hikers we met were friendly and encouraging to my son – everyone understood how challenging it is to carry a heavy pack for many miles, especially for someone that young.
View from Thomas Knob on Mount Rogers, VA
On day 1 we hiked 6 miles mostly uphill until we stopped for the night at Thomas Knob, the highest point of the AT in VA. It was cold and windy that night and my son had trouble sleeping because of it. In the morning I showed him the map and possible bail-out options if he was really having a terrible time. We talked about what continuing meant and how leaving early might make him feel, and as we got moving and he warmed up, his spirits lifted and he decided to stick to our plan for the big day ahead. We were rewarded with gorgeous landscapes and the legendary wild ponies of Grayson Highlands.
Rocky Terrain on Wilburn Ridge, Appalachian Trail, VA
On the second day we hiked about 12 miles of rolling technical terrain over 8.5 hours. It was by far the hardest thing he’s done yet, and the last hour especially was a struggle, but we made it to our spot for the night at the Old Orchard just in time to set up camp, find water, and make dinner before dark.
The descent toward Scales with the Blue Ridge, Appalachian Trail, VA
On our last morning, after hiking about 1.5 mile, we said goodbye to the Appalachian Trail and finished our hike for about 2 miles on the Fairwood Valley trail. This was mostly downhill and other than a stream crossing, smooth terrain, so our adventure ended a little faster than expected. After celebrating in the parking lot, we drove 2 hours to make it home in time for pancakes and bacon for lunch.
During the trip, I was struck by the variety of landscapes and trail surfaces we moved through: dense forests, rock gardens, mountains, hills and valleys, with all shades of green, big skies, cold and heat and wind… I’m taking all these landscapes with me as I work on a new crop of paintings… so stay tuned.
