Portrait by Matthew Spiegelman
Jennifer Sullivan creates paintings that investigate feeling and personal mythology through observation and invention. Working from a diaristic and symbolic sensibility, she uses composition, touch, and intuitive color relationships to give form to inner experience. Drawing on borrowed plotlines and protagonists from mythology, film, art history, and music, her work weds personal experience with shared cultural references and archetypes. Source images and found objects are inhabited much like an actor inhabits a role, allowing tenderness, humor, spirit, and vulnerability to coexist.
Sullivan is a painter who also works in drawing, monotype, and hand-painted bleach T-shirts. She is based in Ridgewood, Queens, and holds an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design and a BFA from Pratt Institute.
Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include The Tenderness (with Raychael Stine, Emma Gray HQ, 2024) and Sleeper (Turn Gallery, 2021). She has participated in group exhibitions at NADA Miami, Peter Blum Gallery, Marinaro, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Awards include fellowships with Shandaken Projects (2020) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2012–13), as well as residencies at The Lighthouse Works, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Ox-Bow School of Art, and Yaddo.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, ARTNews, Art Papers, TimeOut NY, and The Brooklyn Rail.
For inquiries, email me: jennifer@jennifersullivan.org
Instagram: @jennifersullivanstudio
Selected T-shirts can also be purchased through:
Personal Space in Vallejo, CA
Ruthann Gallery in Catskill, NY