About

Jaclyn Santos

is a visual artist living and working in New York City. She was raised in Miami, Florida and moved to Baltimore, Maryland to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art. After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors in 2007, she spent two years as a painting assistant to renowned Artist Jeff Koons. In 2010 she starred in the first season of the Bravo reality television show, “Work of Art: the Next Great Artist,” where she was a semi-finalist. She had her first solo exhibition in New York City in 2010 at DFN gallery, and has shown her work in dozens of major group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.

Her work is currently included in the exhibition, “Paparazzi! Photographers, Stars, and Artists” at the Pompidou Center in Metz, France.

Philosophy

I am currently using painting as a means to explore the merging of perceived dualities; the traditional with the technological, the physical with the spiritual, man with nature, and reality with illusion. The paintings are not diptychs, but for each figure painting there is a corresponding portrait of an animal. They are displayed together and function interdependently, with the animals serving as an outward expression of the figure's inner force. The paintings are all rendered in a blue color scheme. When they are viewed through programmed iPhones I will install on location, the entire scene in front of the viewer shifts; the paintings appear in natural colors, while everything else in the viewer's environment will be inverted.