I encountered Jennifers work over ten years ago at the R.H.A Annual Summer Show

The piece in question was an etching of a young girl on a swing in a playground. It was cinematic, a frozen moment that drew the viewer into the world of the subject as they looked over the girl’s shoulder towards what she was looking at as she swung, the object of her gaze was nothing in particular. The ordinariness of the subject allied with extraordinary drawing ability, (there was no aquatints etc) etched the image and moment in my mind to the extent that I still draw down on it to this day.

This is what Jennifer can do. In work after work, piece after piece, she makes sense of her biography, where she comes from, what she has been exposed to, the environment that shaped her. She has the ability to dig deep under the skin, there is a dimension to her work, an ability to reveal something that is not obviously present, the artists vision that communicates and touches us when we are least expecting it. The world that Jennifer exposes to us so fluently across a wide range of media has refreshed me in particular, it has opened my eyes towards a new and different take on the way I filter the world and geography of the West of Ireland.

It is a West of Ireland that is at the edge of towns and roundabouts but still shares proximity to a mighty ocean that lies just beyond the old playgrounds and tired suburban stretches that form a significant part of the world that Cunningham examines. Mick O Dea PRHA