Contact Jennifer through this link or directly at: jen@jidowney.com. Photo by Betsy Blake Photography.

Jennifer’s fascination with nature began in her earliest years, when she spent the wide-open days of childhood exploring the forests, rivers and hills of her native northern California with her German Shepherd, Ebon.

Years later, she graduated from U.C. Davis with degrees in English and Economics, as well as a slew of art courses and mentorship. Five months out of school, she left to live in Ireland for a year, where her love of travel, geographic exploration and cultural study was ignited.

Themes of her artwork center around the relationship between humans and the land, as well as women’s experience and role in society.

Her study of the human-land relationship led to a focus on dams – specifically the impacts that dams exert on riverine ecosystems and species. In 2013 and 2015, she spent two months with scientists deep in the Amazon River basin, exploring the Amazon, Negro, Madeira, Javary, Itaquai and Uatuma Rivers. By boat, motorcycle, bus, plane, car and foot, she studied the ecosystems, hydrology and wildlife impacted by the Balbina, Jirau and Santo Antonio dams. A year prior, in 2012, she traveled to the U.S. Southeast for similar research and observation, focusing on the dams of the Little Tennessee River, as well as the Great Dismal Swamp.

In her art, she uses layers and juxtaposition to bring together disparate elements – be they species, figures, landscapes or textural effects – into a shared, new space.  

Jennifer descends from a line of artists on her mother’s side and engineers on her father’s side. Her maternal grandmother was an artist at Walt Disney Studios during the last years of WWII, painting backdrops and celluloids for films such as Fantasia, and her great grandfather was a mason at Universal Studios in the 1930s.

Jennifer’s new works continue a focus on humans’ relationship with the land and ecosystems, as well as our new energy futures. She and her partner Chris split their time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C.