The Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery is proud to announce its exhibition of artist Jena Thomas’ new body of paintings Liminal Landscapes, opening on Saturday, September 9th from 6 to 9pm.

Jena Thomas is an emerging contemporary artist who, after completing her MFA at the University of Miami, already boasts an impressive exhibition record. Recent accolades include being selected as one of the 40 top MFA students in the country by New American Paintings Magazine. Thomas was chosen out of over 750 applicants for the title. She was also a finalist for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award and received the Ruth Katzman Scholarship from the Art Students’ League of New York.

Thomas’s work portrays ethereal and somewhat strange landscapes that explore the ways in which man alters the natural world. Constructs such as pools, patios, and train tracks serve as visceral boundary lines between the fabricated and the organic, and feature prominently in her work. Soft colors invoke a dusk light sensation, depicting the world in that liminal stage between light and darkness. It is that nearly supernatural glow that fabricates a “luscious otherworld that is teeming with weird individuality.”

However, even the stillness of her scenes lack menace. Rather, they demonstrate a standstill in time; a moment that is captured in the softness of twilight before life begins to emerge. Intentionally, Thomas produces a strange-yet-familiar image that plays with perception. Though stylistically beautiful and seemingly serene, each canvas opens up the sensation that what man has created and designated as his habitat is somehow rooted in the absurd.

Thomas is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Miami and received her Bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. She has exhibited extensively in Florida and New England, with recent exhibitions at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Lowe Art Museum, FatVillage Projects, and at Art Palm Beach.