About the Artist

"The paintings by Jean Plough are serene excursions into a deep soul."
-- R.B. Strauss, AroundPhilly.com

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Land and space inform my work, and paintings often refer to a state of mind. I believe the earth be seen and experienced as vivid and beautiful, and can inspire us in ways we don’t understand.

I do not want to limit viewers to the here and now, but rather allow a space to open to extend their experience. Because I practice meditation, and am interested in the center it creates, I also look at boundaries between forms, and what happens in and around them.

The quality and texture of paint and crayon can cause forms and color to happen by accident. Working with paint gives access to forms that may be only felt to exist, causing shapes and fields to appear which have not been seen previously. Therefore, painting may let me realize a part of myself that is inaccessible otherwise.

"Grand sweeps of paint are offered up as doorways, paths to other realms that don't just break the picture plane but shatter it in total."
-- R.B. Strauss, Chestnut Hill Local

My work has been influenced by my teacher, Warren Rohrer, and by Rothko, Diebenkorn, and DeKooning . I studied painting at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I have taught in inner city Philadelphia schools, and now teach for the University of Phoenix.

I enjoy hiking, and regularly lead a moonlight hike at Valley Forge. I also teach and practice meditation at the Shambhala Center in Philadelphia.

A positive, radiating quality is what I hope comes through my paintings, and what I want to impart to viewers.

". . . art that will set you into a world totally shared yet made the more subjective in just how Plough found herself at the exactness of being, before experience found its way into art."
-- R.B. Strauss, AroundPhilly.com