(Orrville, Ohio, 1955 - )
Lives and works in New York
Jenny Scobel's work is dominated
almost exclusively by a series of somber, monochromatic drawings
of women set against peculiar, improbable landscapes. The source
of these drawings are photographs found in vintage magazines, in
particular a Slavic-looking young woman with a scarf over her head,
taken from an advertisement, and an Italian girl who appeared in
a 1950s photograph. In the drawings, the heads of these two young
women are repeatedly placed onto the bodies of other women, sometimes
including celebrities such as Audrey Hepburn. These figures are set
in rooms decorated with intense, strange wallpapers, 50's era cartoons,
caricatures hovering within the frame, or with the figure holding
an animal or other symbolic object. Scobel first draws in graphite and
then pours melted wax over the surface of the image, literally sealing
the portrait in. This gesture may serve to protect the surface of
the completed work, but it also serves as evidence of a desire on Scobel’s
part to entomb these figures, and seal over what they may be trying
to tell us. |
