In her first solo exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery, J.A. Feng presents a series of paintings that shine and throb, as though each canvas has a glowing, beating heart beneath its surface. Painting with luminous color, Feng creates myth-driven narratives that tap into the strength, and constraint, that can be found in the emotional and psychological landscape of women. As she states, a painting is “an altar to empathy.

Through the use of cosmic, primal, and cartoonish surrogate forms, I depict poetic moments of vulnerability, tenderness, and humor, in the midst of the awkward and absurd, the terror and pleasure that is the sublime.” By layering transparent glazes that flicker over still visible, coarse, linen and jute terrains, Feng references the passage of time, “the sensation of recalling memories and gazing into the subconscious.” Her technique also “obliterates and obfuscates boundaries between forms,” ultimately allowing Feng’s personal mythology of the female condition to be universal, and open for everyone. “The resulting iconic yet nebulous forms create a certain specificity within ambiguity, like a Rorschach, inviting open readings of the imagery.” The title of Feng’s exhibition, "Mothership", hints at the eerie abstraction, yet familiar distinction, of the human form, the simultaneous feelings of playfulness and pressure that come with living in these bodies in this society, while also reminding us that we are all aboard one vessel, together.

Based in New York City, J.A. (Jackie) Feng has had solo exhibitions at the New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Alva, OK; and Boston University, Boston, MA. She has also been exhibited at Gallery 12.26 at the Dallas Art Fair, Dallas, TX; Concord Center for the Visual Arts, Concord, MA; Gallery Korea of the Korean Cultural Center, New York, NY; Morgan Lehman 2, New York, NY; AGENCY Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Centotto Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Skowhegan School of Painting and Scultpure, Skowhegan, NY; and Emerson College, Boston, MA. She has received fellowships from NARS Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.