Ella Jennings

Ella Jennings paints luminous interiors as settings to encounter God. Her subject matter often features domestic spaces drawn from familiar locations, such as her childhood home. The everyday buildings we frequent are often imbued with nostalgia, memories, and emotional states based on our experiences in those places. Although Jennings draws inspiration from specific rooms, she pares down the composition to only the essentials — structures, shapes, and shadows. In this way, the works become settings for viewers to project their own associations with the spaces and metaphorically “walk” their own dwellings, where each viewer has the opportunity to encounter the Divine. Jennings draws inspiration from American realism and the geometry of precisionism.

Shown alongside This Holy Space is Home (2023), Jennings’ new series Abide With Me is more intuitive — relying less on photographic references, the artist instead focuses on dynamic compositions. Subtle references to spirituality are present in each painting, such as cruciform wooden beams, trinitarian shapes, and biblical titles. My Father’s House (Shines Brightly) refers to a Bruce Springsteen song of a similar name, and also correlates with the subject matter of her parents’ house. Many of the works are peaceful with colorful, luminous tones; a few are more solemn, introducing emotions of grief, loneliness, and exhaustion as responses to the incongruities of life.

To abide is to dwell, be present, and be held and kept. The hymn “Abide With Me,” said to be written when the author was dying, is a reminder that God is with us “every passing hour.”