Janyce Denise Glasper
Drawing, Painting, Printmaking
Janyce Denise Glasper is a Dayton, Ohio based multidisciplinary artist, writer, independent scholar. She received a BFA in drawing from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and post baccalaureate and MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her essays and short stories have appeared/forthcoming in Sixty Inches From Center, ÆQAI Journal, Belt Magazine, RaceBaitr, and other publications. She received an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writers Grant for Short Form Writing, a fiction fellowship from Roots, Wounds, & Words: Words of Resistance + Restoration, additional support from the Authors League Fund and Lampblack Direct Aid, and was commissioned by the Museum of Nebraska Art to write and record an essay about printmaker/painter Ruth Waddy.
Currently, she contributes for the Philadelphia based publication artblog and writes at femfilmrogue and Black Women Make Art. She is working on several graphic novels including “The Traveling One-Eyed Teddy Bear’s Perspective Before Getting Lost Abroad,” a story commemorating the grief that comes with losing her beloved stuffed animal in London.
My often autobiographical acrylic paintings reflect on intimate memories and unfulfilled dreams ignited by the joys of reading; my whole other passion being literature and words since childhood. I explore that specific comfort through my vivid use of color, pattern, and texture. Black women figures (self portraits, family, or characters from Alice Walker fiction) are either portrayed in company with books or interacting around the presence of other women.
Selections include paintings from the “Just Another Course to Quietly Understanding the Endurance of Loving You Now” (the JACQUELYN paintings) series— works that stemmed from the special brand of deep-seated grief that comes from losing a beloved mother. A mother is oftentimes a girl’s first real love— the one who holds your hand, ties your shoes, gives the best hugs, changes your diapers, watches both soap operas and cartoons, checks your ears for bees, reads you books, plays Janet Jackson cassette tapes, takes you to your doctor’s appointments, washes and braids your hair, kisses your cheeks, and waves goodbye. Seeing as my mother Jacquelyn Denise Knolton’s favorite color was blue, she wears it in every significant portrait.
My imaginative, healing-vessel paintings highlight reading and dreaming as tender survival mechanisms rendered through the womanist gaze.
“Dreaming of Gloria Deum 1”
16” x 20”
Acrylic on black canvas