J E N A T H O M A S
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Jena Thomas creates paintings that explore how we build, reshape, and often distort our environments. Her work reflects on the ways we “idealize” nature and then reinvent it in artificial spaces designed for comfort, leisure, and control. These spaces— swimming pools, miniature golf courses, carefully manicured highway medians—are both familiar and strangely surreal. Thomas is interested in how we transform landscape into stage sets for everyday life, places that echo theme parks more than wilderness. Through her use of vivid, synthetic color layered into more naturalistic landscapes, she captures the odd beauty and subtle deception in these constructed environments. Thomas considers how we experience the land today: flashing past through a car window, glimpsed from thousands of feet in the air, or scrolling across a screen on Google Earth. These detached perspectives reveal how our connection to the physical landscape has grown increasingly distant, mediated, and strange as human being continue to strive to make their mark on the world.
Born in South Florida, Jena Thomas is a South Carolina–based artist whose work has been exhibited extensively throughout Florida and the Northeast, including shows at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Context New York, and Art Palm Beach. Her work has been featured on the cover of Create Magazine and Creative Quarterly, as well as in New American Paintings. Thomas is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Pollock-Krasner Grant, the Ruth Katzman Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York, and the 701 Center for Contemporary Art Prize. She was also a finalist for Miami University’s Young Painters Competition. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Thomas is currently represented by the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, CT.
EDUCATION
2015 MFA University of Miami-Miami, FL
Graduate Teaching Assistant Fellowship in Painting
2009 BFA Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA
Double Major: Painting/ Art History; Graduated with Honors and Distinction
Born in South Florida, Jena Thomas is a South Carolina–based artist whose work has been exhibited extensively throughout Florida and the Northeast, including shows at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Context New York, and Art Palm Beach. Her work has been featured on the cover of Create Magazine and Creative Quarterly, as well as in New American Paintings. Thomas is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Pollock-Krasner Grant, the Ruth Katzman Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York, and the 701 Center for Contemporary Art Prize. She was also a finalist for Miami University’s Young Painters Competition. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Thomas is currently represented by the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery in Stamford, CT.
EDUCATION
2015 MFA University of Miami-Miami, FL
Graduate Teaching Assistant Fellowship in Painting
2009 BFA Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA
Double Major: Painting/ Art History; Graduated with Honors and Distinction
