Jennifer Watson is a self-described perfectionist who, little by little, has learned to find beauty in imperfections. She won prizes for her artwork as a child, but during her college years she lost confidence in her abilities under the pressure of critiques and demanding professors. Watson changed course, put her brushes aside, and eventually found her way into a banking career. She remembers this period of her life as a time of diminishing herself and her abilities and denying who she really was and who she really wanted to be. She says that she found herself “shrinking into small spaces.”

Thirty years later, just for fun, Watson took some enameling classes at the Metal Museum. The experience was transformational. Not only did she love her newfound skills, but in 2022, she was also inspired to paint again. She began incorporating three-dimensional enameled copper sculpture into highly designed, jewel-like paintings that mix overlapping and colliding geometries with animal and plant imagery. Watson’s art rewards slow looking. What at first seems to be perfect symmetry is often revealed to be inexact. Organic forms such as feathers, flower petals, or insects disrupt the strict construction of circles and squares. Rows of tiny dots applied freehand with metallic paint wobble and meander because they vary in size and density. Watson’s art is bright and kaleidoscopic, suggesting that she is done shrinking away. Now, the small spaces in the artist’s life are purely visual—they are the little in-between shapes, and the bits and pieces of copper and enamel, all fused together to form a richer, more complex whole.