Jean Wallace

my artistic process

With a strong foundation in documentary photography, I primarily focus on making images of people. I'm interested in representing the human experience. When I know someone intimately, I create my best images. For this reason, many of the people in my images are friends and family. Others I've come to know as friends because of our work together, bonding through the artistic process. 

Although I frequently do return to photography in my work, when I was in school studying to become an art teacher, I realized the need to utilize multiple different forms of media in order to best express my ideas. Photography wasn't always enough. A perfect example of this is Elegy for Emily, a series of encaustic paintings I developed as part of my thesis work. I wanted desperately to reference the qualities of skin and searched for months in my studio and beyond, for the perfect medium. It was in Ecuador, in the basement of a church, where I first laid eyes on the lifelike wooden figures of Christ encased in layers of wax, that I found my solution. It is not uncommon for me to begin with a problem, a concept, an idea, followed by time exploring and finding the "just right" media to express it. This way of working has served me as an artist and a teacher - always searching, growing, evolving.