Jennifer Chernecki is a BC-based visual artist whose practice centres on painting and sculpture, with a particular focus on emotive, highly detailed imagery. She is best known for intimate portraits of humans and animals that evoke wonder, curiosity, and a sense of quiet ritual. Drawing deeply from nature, Chernecki incorporates plants and animals with symbolic significance, reimagining them within what she describes as a personal “Micro-Utopic” world. Her work balances conceptual depth with accessibility, often infused with humor and narrative, inviting viewers of all ages into layered visual puzzles.
Chernecki graduated with a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in 2008, concentrating on oil painting and sculpture. She lived and worked in Vancouver for over 20 years before establishing her home and studio in Salmon Arm. Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Comox Valley Art Gallery and Chapel Arts in Vancouver, as well as numerous group exhibitions across BC. Alongside her studio practice, she has extensive teaching experience, working with numerous BC-based art institutions. Her work is held in both public and private collections.
About My Neck of the Woods: Forays into Existentialism:
This painting presents a surreal and meticulously rendered fusion of human anatomy and forest landscape, where the profile of a human head becomes a living environment. The face, shown in repose with closed eyes, dissolves downward into exposed musculature, veins, and sinew that seamlessly transform into tree trunks, roots, and earthen ground. The ear opens into a dark, wooded interior, forming a hollowed passageway that reads simultaneously as anatomy and forest architecture. The palette balances warm flesh tones with deep greens and browns, reinforcing the uneasy harmony between body and land.
Within this hybrid world, a small human figure stands ankle-deep in a narrow stream that flows from the interior of the head outward into the foreground. Surrounding them are carefully observed animals—birds in flight, a rabbit, a flamingo-like wading bird—each positioned as if part of a quiet narrative unfolding beyond immediate explanation. These creatures, along with details such as an apple embedded in the flesh and creeping vines threading through muscle fibers, introduce symbolic tension between vulnerability, nourishment, and transformation. The scale shift between the monumental head and the miniature figure intensifies the sense of psychological interiority, as though the viewer is witnessing a dreamscape or inner landscape made visible.
For all you deep art divers out there.
Artist’s website.
Comox Valley Art Gallery website.
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