ABOUT
Jennifer Reis is an emerging Canadian fine artist and art conservator based in Ontario. She obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art and Art History from OCAD University in 2024 and her graduate certificate in Art Conservation and Cultural Heritage Preservation from Fleming College in 2025.
Jennifer is primarily a landscape painter with oil as her primary medium. She uses found objects like natural, unprimed wood and bark to replace the traditional canvas. She enjoys working with wood as an equal partner in her creations. She explores the natural environment for inspiration and to fuel the context of her work.
Jennifer has experience and knowledge in conserving objects originating in ceramics, wood, metals, textiles and paper. With her background in fine arts, she wants to pursue her career in art conservation within the stream of reproductions or art on paper and paintings. She has refined hand dexterity and is skilled at colour matching and chromatic reintegrations.
Currently, Jennifer is active in the animal healthcare industry, working in an emergency hospital as a medical professional. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, indulging in horror movies and exploring different creative avenues.
Jennifer acknowledges that the land she chooses to explore is part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples live and care for this land. She acknowledges the territory of the Anishinabek, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Ojibway/Chippewa peoples; the land home to the Metis and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation who are direct descendants of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She appreciates the value of the land and she vows to honour, protect and preserve it.
“Through my work, I aim to connect with the natural landscape, imitating the stillness and beauty around me. Through my use of unprimed collected wood as substrates, I add a sense of materiality to my work, the texture acting as my guide and base of inspiration and compositional planning. Similar to the natural beauty I perceive in the world, my work is aesthetically driven, focusing on representing the natural world and bringing the outside inside. Through my paintings, I aim to bring a piece of nature's calming and rejuvenating energy and to provide an escape from everyday chaos.”
“Art conservation to me means maintaining the historical, cultural and spiritual essence of an object through limited colonial involvement with preservation. I am a strong believer in repatriation and honouring the previous life the object has had. I advocate for collaborating with the objects’ cultural heritage for best practices in preserving every quality the object contains”