
JENN​IFER LYNNE ROBERTS
WRITER ARTIST
“All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
- Eli Siegel

I'm a writer and self-taught artist who began making art in 2018, inspired by a long-standing passion for art history and a deep interest in how artists think and create. I approach art-making as both a personal and critical process, informed by years of engaging with other artists' work through research and writing. My practice often reflects on the layered nature of identity, perception, and mental health
My artwork has been shown in exhibitions like TRANSIENCE (2025) with Fibre Arts Take Two, and LUSH (2023) and FUN SIZE (2022) with Jen Tough Gallery. I’ve also contributed to the IDENTITY exhibition catalogue and the UC Davis MFA Thesis exhibition catalogue.
Living with bipolar disorder influences how I approach my art, especially my work with paper. I use mixed media and build up layers with materials like acrylic paint, graphite, hanji, hand-painted papers, and texture mediums. Then I scrape, sand, or peel parts away to reveal what’s underneath. This mix of construction and excavation feels like a way of exploring my inner world and the world around me. I’m drawn to the traditional techniques of Joomchi and Momigami—Korean and Japanese methods of transforming paper through repeated handling, layering, and softening. These processes allow the paper to become textured, sculptural and like fabric. Throughout, I choose colors and create compositions that help me express a sense of emotional and visual balance—a reflection of my ongoing search for harmony.



​One of the things that baffles me … is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls.
― Carrie Fisher
Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.
― Anais Nin
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Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
― Leo Tolstoy
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The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
― John Muir
In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality..
― Virginia Woolf
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