In her studio’s top-floor perch overlooking the Old Mill District, Jennifer McCaffrey’s canvas is situated next to a window framing a dynamic, unfolding sky. It is a setting for daily discovery, a space where she crafts landscapes that capture thematic patterns of land and light. [Photo above by Bec Ellis]
McCaffrey has always been drawn to the sky’s endless depth, an appreciation she contributes to growing up in the Midwest. The sky often serves as the mood setter for her paintings, an ever-changing canvas that inspires the connection between the external world and the landscapes within.
From her earliest memories in small-town Indiana, McCaffrey was an artist in a variety of forms such as dance, piano and painting. After receiving her degree as a physician assistant (PA) and starting her family, she found herself craving the “float state” in the margins of her days—moments she described when time would effortlessly float away.
She recalls experiencing this most when painting during the fringe hours at her kitchen table while her children were asleep. After relocating to Bend in 2018, Central Oregon’s poetic beauty became a catalyst for her art. For McCaffrey, this was found among alpine meadows, on the still shores of glacier lakes and in the shadows of jagged peaks. “Part of my creative rhythm is to play first before I can create,” McCaffrey explained. “I need to fill up the cup of inspiration by spending unhindered time in these landscapes.”
This cup seems to overflow effortlessly into her work as she mixes rich palettes of oil paint to masterfully recreate scenes of serenity and splendor: the billowing clouds of an alpenglow sunset, a winter afternoon’s snow-laden silence or the ethereal majesty of Broken Top’s ridgeline. To capture her subject’s depth and intensity, she stretches raw linen over canvas with a coat of clear gesso on top to augment the texture and color of the fabric, and then paints directly on it.
“My art tends to be a combination of whatever is going on with me internally coupled with what I see in a landscape,” she described. “I’m often trying to create a movement or a mood. Landscapes tend to be a great format to convey that.”
McCaffrey’s paintings range in style from abstract to impressionistic, creating moments that are suspended between the perceived and the felt. She believes landscapes are alive within all of us, that the inner and outer are always in communication with each other. This is inspired by a quote from a former professor which guides her creative process: “If you cracked us open, you would find landscapes.”
After her third child was born, McCaffrey rented a studio space to put more time toward her painting practice. “Since becoming a mom, my art has become therapy. My goal is to crack myself open to see what is inside of me at the current moment,” she shared. “There are still pieces of myself that I need to take out and examine, and art is the way I express that, by putting it into paint and onto canvas to create a composition.”
McCaffrey likens this process to a form of excavation—a gathering of inspiration and a sifting before landing on a concept or color palette. Then, the magic begins. Visitors to the Old Mill District will see her work as the featured artist for its Winter Art Series.
“I want consumers of my art to have an encounter, a moment of connection when they recognize something they cherish…whether that is the actual composition itself or just a feeling that calls to something deep within and draws them in.”
Read more about Jennifer’s art here.
