Jennifer Jones Rashleigh Cédian Painting 184 Highland Rd. Tiverton, RI  02878 508-951-0696 jenniferrashleigh@msn.com www.cedianpainting.com   An artist and art historian, I have been painting and drawing on paper, canvas, walls, floors and furniture for as long as I can remember.  Reared in Western Colorado, I grew up in a setting of extremes - red rock sand-stone cliffs on one side, lush jagged alpine mountains on the other.  Influenced by the beauty, solace and strength of the desert and the Rockies, I am drawn to works of natural design.  I find great challenge and joy creating the curve in a feather, the vein in a leaf, the iridescent colors in a fish.  My art work is often a simple study of these complex wonders.   My artistic development in the studio is informed by my training as an art historian.  I hold a BA and MA in Art History, from the University of Colorado, where I studied Italian Renaissance and wrote my thesis on the science of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.  I pursued my doctoral studies at Brown University and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, where I studied Art Theory and Spanish Golden Age Painting in Madrid and Seville.   From my years as an Art Historian I have traipsed through miles of picture enshrined in the corridors of the BMFA, Hermitage, Prado, Uffizi, Vatican, Louvre, and Metropolitan among others.  Though moving in their grandeur, I find these places a frustrating contradiction:  paintings and sculptures are made through visceral emotive processes; art work inside a gallery is untouchable.  That’s ironic isn’t it? Art that moves us, visions that touch our soul are placed out of reach.   Removing barriers to enjoy and experience art, I put paintings on doors, pillows and floors.  I am thrilled when my works can be touched by head, hands and feet and looked at closely.  I like the idea of infusing practical and usable things with unexpected splendor.  Rather than viewed from behind the velvet rope in a museum, I hope my pieces are touched, turned, and tussled, showing signs that people enjoy and are moved by art.