SOLO EXHIBITION OF FLORIDA WILDFLOWER PANELS – 11TH NOVEMBER

Contact Information:
Jenny Bleackley
+1 (727) 218-7894
jenny@jennybleackley.com

British-American artist Jenny Bleackley opens timely exhibition at St Petersburg’s newest arts and culture venue

St. Petersburg, Fl. Today, British-American artist Jenny Bleackley announced that she will be opening her exhibition, Wildness Within, a defiant, dreamily beautiful ode to Floridian wildflowers, on Friday 11th of November, 6 to 8pm, at Savant. It will close on Sunday 20th of November. Savant, a striking new event space in St Petersburg, is located at 634 2nd Avenue South.

Jenny is an impressionistic watercolor artist who has mastered the art of using her medium on canvas, reimagining its traditional form with techniques that make it move in delightful and subversive ways. She’ll be showing a series of twelve panels, started during lockdown, inspired by the wildflowers she discovered on walks around the state parks of Pinellas County.

Taking over two years to complete, the twelve panels became an urgent incarnation of what is real, natural and beautiful: a turning away from a political landscape ruptured by Covid and obfuscation of the truth; a turning towards the native beauty threatened by an undeniable climate crisis.

Jenny says of the panels: “It was a need to show there is something else going on in this world that can give us hope – the wildflowers that struggle to survive through the waves of extraordinary extremes of weather, from blazing heat to flooding. But also, to understand these are real problems – unlike the fabrications of political players with their own agendas.”

She adds, “I’m enchanted by the wildflowers’ beauty and determination to thrive. Their chaos, competing for the best light, provides a free style for me to paint.”

Wild and dreamlike, the series embodies an acute appreciation of natural beauty suspended in time as the pandemic stopped the world in its tracks. The wildflowers are depicted in a representational yet unseasonal composition, climbing joyously up demandingly tall, oblong canvases. The first six panels show the wildflowers painted out of their natural habitat; the final six move them back to their roots as daily life opens back up and the artist’s need for control dissipates.

About Jenny Bleackley: Jenny was born in the States and emigrated to the U.K. as a child. She returned in 2011, drawn to St. Petersburg’s burgeoning arts scene and weather. She enjoys painting in her studio at the ArtsXchange most days. Her first solo show was in March and April 2019 at the Mirella Cimato Gallery, St. Petersburg, and she continues to sell internationally through her website, www.jennybleackley.com, and exhibits in the U.S. and the U.K.