ArtTalk – Jennifer Hansen Rolli

Jennifer Hansen Rolli was only about nine years old when she began painting along with her father on his painting jaunts. He was a dedicated outdoorsman and took his family canoeing on the Delaware River and camping along its banks. These trips rooted in Jennifer a deep relationship with nature, one that is visible in her painting even now that she has her own children.

Jennifer’s Impressionist style is employed both in loving landscapes of Bucks County as well as in her genre paintings of children playing in a creek or climbing a sycamore tree. Her paintings are bathed in light. She has a feeling for dramatic clouds, emphasizing their form with strong brushstrokes. She’s equally at home painting the Metropolitan Opera’s famous Sputnik chandeliers or the cavernous hall of Grand Central Station. Jennifer seeks to tell a story with her paintings, one she recognizes that the viewer understands uniquely from their own perspective. We’ll talk with her about how she approaches the process of creating these stories and how she solves what she calls the puzzle of making it all work.

Jennifer Hansen Rolli is a Yardley, PA, native who has been painting since her father gave her a professional painter’s box to accompany him on his own plein air jaunts. He was her first teacher, sharing the fundamentals of color, light, and equipment. She later earned a BFA in Communication Design from Kutztown University. For 15 years she ran her own Philadelphia-based firm, Hansen Design, and her work was featured in trade publications such as Communication Arts, Graphis and Print. Her fine art was first exhibited in 2007 and has since been collected internationally. She’s written and illustrated three children’s books and illustrated another. Jennifer paints covers for Bucks County Magazine and ads for Visit Bucks County. She’s a Salmagundi Club NYC award winner and has been a frequent exhibitor for over 15 years at Phillips’ Mill Community Association. Her painting, “Valley Below August Skies,” is on exhibition with Art in Embassies at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Kigali, Rwanda. Jennifer is one of Silverman Gallery’s original Core Four in Buckingham, PA.

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