Jil Evans

The series Aqua Alta (“high water”) are abstract paintings based on observation of a flooded river moving throughout a woodland in Minnesota. Evans’ is drawn to the movement of light, reflections on water disordered by what lies underneath, and the premonitions of metamorphosis perceptible in natural structures. In the way that sound, rhythm, and breath physically build compression and express feeling in a lyric poem, Evans’ uses contrasting color and spatial depths, a wide range of marks, gestures, and the physicality of paint- from sheer washes to thick impasto – to suggest the way intimacy, alienation, struggle, and freedom exist in the psyche always in a constant state of flux.

Evans’ work is also informed by the Italian Baroque painters, Giambattista Tiepolo and Tintoretto in particular, whose Venetian color, animation, and high-spirited gestures are teeming with animated force. Evans’ aspires in her paintings to express a profusion of activity, developed with a keen desire for uniting near and far, small and large, the loud and the quiet, the rent with the joined.
Evans has shown nationally and internationally, and has work in several museum and corporate collections. She has received the Jerome Foundation Grant, Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board grants, the Pew Grant to study and paint in Italy, and residencies at the American Academy in Rome and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Evans has a BFA from Calvin College, and received her MA in painting at the University of Iowa and MFA in painting from Stanford University. Evans is represented by Kolman & Pryor Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was a founding member of Form+Content Gallery.