JP spent her childhood living in a small town at the edge of the Mohave Desert and moved to San Diego as a young adult. The duality of experience formed by growing up in a small, rural, isolated community and transitioning to adulthood in a large, urban, accessible city sparked a curiosity about what exactly brings joy and what destroys it, and where the balance hangs in between.
Her work is centered around portraying with paint that perilous moment somewhere between joy and sorrow, in the attempt to concretely capture the experience of realizing a memory is a joyous one while simultaneously grieving the loss of it fading.
She earned a B.A. in Visual Art (Studio) from UCSD with a Minor in Psychology and worked for several years as a decorative painter and muralist before becoming a full‐time studio artist. JP’s work has been shown at the Oceanside Museum of Art, the La Jolla Athenaeum, the City of Encinitas, Covet Gallery and at the University of California, San Diego, San Diego Art Institute and San Diego State University. Her work can be found online at www.jpwackenstedt.com.
