Jennifer Steele is currently studying Contemporary Fine Art at The Essential School of Painting. Before returning to art, she studied politics and worked in brand advertising. She currently works from her home studio in Leeds, balancing her practice with motherhood.
Her dream-like work explores the role of stories and their impact on hope, identity, empowerment and our understanding of our place in the universe. Her practice consists of painting, textiles and poetic prose, weaving together her interest in reoccurring history, the subconscious, science and fashion to draw parallels between ancient myth and the stories we experience today.
Seeking light in the dark, Steele creates dreamy, enigmatic and totemic works which explores hope, identity, empowerment and our place in the universe.
Her current work sees mysterious forms reflect the heroine’s journey towards internal healing: the descent into the underworld to reconcile with an exiled socially unacceptable shadow-self – a story that echoes through history, from Inanna to today. Clothing as symbols for liberation or repression are suggested, as watery layers of paint are sensitively applied and blotted back to create a feeling of the image breaking apart as the illusions of the ‘real’ world fall away.
