Frame of Mind Presents - The Women and the Bears with Special Guests: Fruits Art Show
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We are pleased to present the winner of our 2026 Juried Art Exhibition artist, Jennifer Baylis! Jennifer was selected as our Juror's Choice, meaning her work stood out amongst the rest as being especially unique and skilled. As a recipient of this award, Jennifer received the opportunity to have her own solo art show in our gallery.
This exhibition brings together three interconnected bodies of work exploring women, folklore, and the poetry of everyday experience. The women in these paintings inhabit moments of transition—quiet thresholds marked by vulnerability, strength, and transformation. Looking back at works painted before my mother’s death in April 2025, I now see these figures as sentinels along a path of change. In their quiet presence, they came to represent strength, perseverance, and the courage to move forward. In this past year following her death, I began experimenting more freely, creating a series that brings together women, bears, and Norwegian rosemaling, drawing from the folklore and folk art of my Scandinavian heritage. In the process, inherited symbols became something deeply personal, allowing me to create a mythology of my own—one that remains open to interpretation.
My still lifes turn toward the intimacy of ordinary things: fruit, light, color, and surface, inviting us to slow down and look closely. The glisten of an orange, the sheen of an eggplant, or the juiciness of a strawberry becomes an opportunity to find beauty and sensuality in the familiar. Across all three bodies of work, I explore the space between the observed and the imagined, the personal and the archetypal. Together, these paintings reflect the ways we move through change, carry what we inherit, and transform the everyday into something newly seen.
Jennifer Baylis currently works full time as an artist as a contemporary realist painter in Missoula, Montana. Creating work inspired by women’s inner emotional worlds and the beauty of everyday life, she strives to bring a painterly approach to the subject. She works primarily in alla prima methods, a Realism technique established and taught the early 20th century. She received her BA in Fine Art from UCLA in 1997, worked in art museums in California, and has shown her work both in California and Montana in group and solo shows.
On Display November 2-23, 2026.
This exhibition brings together three interconnected bodies of work exploring women, folklore, and the poetry of everyday experience. The women in these paintings inhabit moments of transition—quiet thresholds marked by vulnerability, strength, and transformation. Looking back at works painted before my mother’s death in April 2025, I now see these figures as sentinels along a path of change. In their quiet presence, they came to represent strength, perseverance, and the courage to move forward. In this past year following her death, I began experimenting more freely, creating a series that brings together women, bears, and Norwegian rosemaling, drawing from the folklore and folk art of my Scandinavian heritage. In the process, inherited symbols became something deeply personal, allowing me to create a mythology of my own—one that remains open to interpretation.
My still lifes turn toward the intimacy of ordinary things: fruit, light, color, and surface, inviting us to slow down and look closely. The glisten of an orange, the sheen of an eggplant, or the juiciness of a strawberry becomes an opportunity to find beauty and sensuality in the familiar. Across all three bodies of work, I explore the space between the observed and the imagined, the personal and the archetypal. Together, these paintings reflect the ways we move through change, carry what we inherit, and transform the everyday into something newly seen.
Jennifer Baylis currently works full time as an artist as a contemporary realist painter in Missoula, Montana. Creating work inspired by women’s inner emotional worlds and the beauty of everyday life, she strives to bring a painterly approach to the subject. She works primarily in alla prima methods, a Realism technique established and taught the early 20th century. She received her BA in Fine Art from UCLA in 1997, worked in art museums in California, and has shown her work both in California and Montana in group and solo shows.
On Display November 2-23, 2026.
