BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY

Spanning materials as diverse as ceramics, cardboard, and even lint, Jenny Toth creates bas-reliefs and small sculptures. She continues to explore ideas of space and form and the intersection between painting and sculpture.
 
These works mark a transition for Toth, as she begins to incorporate forms and images from her imagination into observational studies. Trained as a painter immersed in abstract formal language, she has spent a career painting from direct observation of elaborate set-ups, self-portraits and landscapes. She loves trying to figure out how to understand space and color on the flat surface. She never seeks a quick image, but invests time in discovering image through form. However, she has always been driven by her yearning for narrative and feeling .
 
As a painter, she always wanted to reach in and pull and push the surface. When she began making bas-reliefs a few years ago, she felt the excitement of making that happen. Working part-time with clay, she has engaged a whole new set of challenges of volume and movement in the round. The struggles of trying to get something to stand up became part of the form. Limitations became assets. She plans on having these sculptures ultimately become subjects for painting and continue a back-and-forth dialogue in her work.
 
Toth’s subjects always include the connection between women and animals. The feelings that drive these images are her own deep love for animals, awkwardness, fear, hiding, humor, and longing.
 
Jenny Toth lives and works in NYC. She lives with two boys, a partner, two dogs, and a menagerie of imaginary beings. She is a Professor of Art at Wagner College. She received her MFA in 1998 from Yale School of Art, and has studied off and on at the New York Studio School.
 
Special thanks to Kay Kojima, Brooklyn Clay West staff, and Jilaine Jones.