Artist Bio
Jillian Whitney is an American painter who investigates systemic violence in education by interpreting her experiences as a primary and secondary art teacher, considering the experiences of other educators and current events. Her work is often fantastical, combining elements from fairytales with imagery and objects from classrooms. This work documents the struggles that schools face as they seek to be safe and equalizing places for children to learn while fostering solidarity and community among educators.
She has a BA with a dual major in Art and Mass Communications from Stephen F. Austin State University, 2018, and she has been an artist in residence at Tenjinyama Art Studio (Japan), Metropolitan Fukujusou (Japan), Wick Farm (England), and Old Schoolhouse Art Residency (Iceland). She is currently a MFA Arts candidate at SMU Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA.
Artist Statement
I am an artist who creates paintings and experimental artist books, archiving the effects of systemic violence in education by interpreting my experiences as a primary and secondary art teacher, considering the experiences of other educators, and current events. My artistic practice reveals the struggles that schools face as they seek to be safe and equalizing places for children to learn while fostering solidarity and community among educators.
These works often incorporate whimsy through elements such as fairy-tale imagery and classroom objects, creating a subversive contrast between the playful aspects of my work and the emotionally charged subjects it addresses. These works also reference schools’ material culture, moving between a variety of scales and materials from palm-sized polymer clay and NFC chip works that invite the viewer to sit and play to large 23’x6’ acrylic paintings that loom above the viewer.
This archive that this work creates does not necessarily reveal new information. There is already data and research supporting much of what I discuss in my artistic practice, but problems affecting education are easy to reduce to simple numbers, especially in a world desensitized to violence. Ultimately, the teachers, children, and communities affected by the systemic problems undermining our public education system are easily ignored.
In my artistic practice, I interpret how these issues have shaped the lives of my former students, my fellow teachers, and myself through paintings that incorporate the material culture of classroom objects and storybook imagery. Together, these works form an archive of educators’ lived experiences. It is an archive that is not fully accessible, where not every detail can be easily read, but it serves as a safe repository for the lived experiences of other educators and me.
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