Waiting Crowds: Jaclyn Conley
“Photographs are open documents that can be filled with imagined characters and their stories. In them, I find persistent and familiar gestures which connect across time and place, art and lived history. In recent paintings, I am compiling figures into the bodies of crowds, masses of shared belief and faith swelling to the edges of the frame.
Jaclyn Conley’s latest body of work explores how crowds can articulate a sense of anxiety, energy, and unpredictability, eloquently communicated through her distinct, gestural painting style.
“In recent paintings, I am compiling figures into the bodies of crowds, masses of shared belief and faith swelling to the edges of the frame. As I’m painting these images I’m able to anchor moments of surety and optimism which are otherwise fleeting. Whether community gatherings, political marches, or spectacles here are people who saw visions, thought they had answers, and dreamed of better ways of being. Whether utopian, political, or spiritual, they are people doing something together under a shared idea. And though largely unfulfilled, rather than seeing these as failures these collective displays confirm a part of human nature that is buoyant” says Conley.
