Jackie Battenfield is an artist known for her luminous paintings and prints that explore natural forces. Her work focuses on the most abstract qualities of landscape—storms, clouds, brushfires, and water ripples. A survey of her graphic works, Moments of Change, opened at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond in October 2009 and traveled to the University of Arizona Museum in Tucson in 2011.
Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Trees are Poems that the Earth Writes upon the Sky at Kenise Barnes Fine Art; Summer Blooms at Chicago Art Source; Another Garden at Wave Hill in the Bronx; and White Light at Addison/Ripley Fine Art in Washington, D.C. Her work is represented by galleries throughout the United States, including Addison/Ripley (Washington, D.C.), Chicago Art Source (Chicago, Illinois), Kenise Barnes (Larchmont, New York), and Allyn Gallup (Sarasota, Florida). Battenfield is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Award, the Warren Tanner Award, and a U.S. Fulbright Specialist Program award. In 2000, she was invited by Golden Artist Colors to lecture on her work as part of the Turner Colors Series at art schools and universities throughout Japan. Her work is held in over 500 collections worldwide, including the New York Public Library; the Zimmerli Art Museum and Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey; the Palmer Museum in Pennsylvania; the Museum of Art at the University of Arizona in Tucson; and United States Embassy collections in Brazil, Cambodia, Croatia, Jamaica, and Peru.
For more than twenty-five years, Battenfield has sustained a living through her studio practice and is a sought-after motivational speaker on the challenges of building a successful career in the visual arts. She is the author of The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Da Capo Press, 2009).