Artist Spotlight - Jill Krasner

Our relationship with the artist Jill Krasner is one borne from serendipity. While scrolling through his Instagram “Explore” page, Eduardo (Soicher-Marin CEO) kept coming across these eye-catching pieces of art. This page is filled with images of quirky still lifes, fascinating abstract land and seascapes, pieces with paper collage, and more. Being of a curious nature, Eduardo decided to reach out to Jill who (to his delight) lives and works out of a studio in Sarasota not far from our office. After a few messages were traded back and forth, we visited Jill in her studio to get a closer look at her art and to speak about licensing her work for an upcoming Soicher-Marin line (which is now available via the Soicher-Marin website).

Jill Krasner is a mixed-media artist who began her career as a commercial artist in New York City. She eventually made her way to Washington, DC, where she worked in the corporate world of commercial broadcasting as an art director, writer, and producer for children's programming and documentaries. She experienced a lot of successes within these avenues, but Jill had a great urge to return to fine art. After putting in 20-plus years, she decided she would leave the corporate world behind, which lead her to relocate to the Gulf Coast of Florida over a decade ago to pursue creating art and teaching (adults and children) full-time.

I spoke with Jill over the phone to gain more understanding of who she is and the process of creating her art. Jill uses her artwork to, as she says, “tell her story”. “They are works of true self-expression.” Krasner goes on, “When I am in my studio, it’s me, and the paint, and the canvas.”

She considers herself as being an intuitive artist. Working from instinct rather than a blueprint, photograph, or reference. Jill begins all her pieces by “activating” her canvas through mark-making. She’ll use pencils and crayons to begin bringing the canvas to life. Jill creates her art working in layers adding oil, watercolor, wax, water-soluble pastels, acrylics, etc. “You name it, I use it.”, Jill exclaims with a chuckle. Mixed media allows Jill to experiment and explore.

You will notice that many of her pieces incorporate words, phrases, lines of poetry, etc. Jill says, “When I write on a canvas, it’s a form of journaling. It might be a poem that I love, or it could be a letter to someone that I’m thinking about, or it could be how I feel that day. It relates to the painting; it relates to me.”

Jill moves from one work in progress to the next in her studio until she feels the subject fleshed out. She knows intuitively when a painting is complete. Jill, on that process, says, “On the few occasions that I don’t experience that, I’ll hang the painting up where I can see it over the next few weeks and see how I feel about it.”.

Jill adds, “98% of all the artists I know will look at a painting they are working on and say, ‘This is awful’, and that’s the biggest problem. Nothing is awful. If you’re painting and expressing yourself, it can’t be awful.”, says Jill. “The first thing I teach my students is to not be their own critic. Just let go and flow with it.”

“Making art is the thing that keeps me grounded and in the moment. Making art in my anchor. There is no past in my studio, no future. There is only now… and now is where I belong, where I do my best work.” She continues, “My paintings are to express the joy I feel at being alive and being able to be a full-time artist. I have the greatest job in the world. I get up every day and I do what I love. I get messy, I get covered with paint and I’m happy as could be.”

The feelings of joy and happiness are mutual here at the offices at Soicher-Marin with this introduction of Jill Krasner’s art for our most recent collection.