Artist: Jessie Homer French
Exhibition title: Chernobyl
Venue: Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, US
Date: April 21 – July 3, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
For five decades, self-taught artist Jessie Homer French (b. 1940, New York, NY) has been painting sardonic yet transcendent scenes of nature’s ongoing encounter with humankind. From her High Desert studio in California, French’s practice is also a process of coping with personal loss, grasping the effects of climate change on the landscape, as well as reflecting on the untameable beauty of the outdoors through a unique mix of awe and dark humor.
On April 26, 1986, there was a 10-day Plutonium core meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant outside Pripyat, now the ghost region of Northern Ukraine. It left behind the largest and most catastrophic nuclear event in history. With 350,000 people permanently evacuated outside the “exclusion zone” due to the high levels of radiation, it was believed that centuries would elapse before the decimated environment could heal, let alone sustain wildlife.
Yet 30 years later, Chernobyl is a thriving ecosystem of bears, bison, wolves, lynxes, horses, and deer, a contemporary Garden of Eden. In this zone of human abandonment, a web of life exists as it did for millions of years before the Anthropocene and will again thereafter. It is precisely these types of didactic inflection points that fascinate French and are so earnestly translated into her paintings that take on special meaning in our current times.
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Jessie Homer French (b. 1940, New York, NY, lives and works in Mountain Center, CA) is a self-taught, self-proclaimed “regional narrative painter” who routinely, perhaps even obsessively, paints archetypes of death, nature and rural life. She has held solo exhibitions including Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin, IE and London, UK; Art Basel Hong Kong, CN; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Winchester Gallery, Victoria, BC; and Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Homer French has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles in 2020. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Palm Springs Museum, CA; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; and at Samuel Freeman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA. French’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Palm Spring Art Musuem and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl, 2020, exhibition view, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
Jessie Homer French, The Wolves of Chernobyl, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 36w in (60.96h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Hemet Lake, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 52w in (60.96h x 132.08w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Tailwater, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 36w in (60.96h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl Spring, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 36w in (60.96h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Under Cover, 2018, Oil on plywood, 12h x 23.50w in (30.48h x 59.69w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl Winter, 2018, Oil on canvas, 36h x 26w in (91.44h x 66.04w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl Summer, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 48w in (60.96h x 121.92w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl Autumn, 2018, Oil on canvas, 36h x 60w in (91.44h x 152.40w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Coachella Valley Cemetery Coyotes, 2019, Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in, 61 x 91 cm
Jessie Homer French, 2017, 2017, Oil on plywood, 36h x 54w in (91.44h x 137.16w cm)
Jessie Homer French, The San Gorgonio Pass, 2018, Oil on plywood, 42h x 36w in (106.68h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Coachella Valley Cemetery, 2019, Oil on canvas, 24h x 36w in (60.96h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Spring Snow – Chernobyl, 2019, Oil on plywood, 12h x 23.50w in (30.48h x 59.69w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Death & Resurrection, Chernobyl, 2018, Oil on canvas, 24h x 24w in (60.96h x 60.96w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Grass Fire, 2019, Oil on plywood, 12h x 36w in (30.48h x 91.44w cm)
Jessie Homer French, McKenzie River Guide, 2019, Oil on canvas, 20h x 30w in (50.80h x 76.20w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Chernobyl Hunt, 2019, Oil on canvas, 25h x 25w in (63.50h x 63.50w cm)
Jessie Homer French, Exclusion Zone Chernobyl, 2019, Oil on canvas, 12h x 24w in (30.48h x 60.96w cm)