Jen Raetsen

I use wool and a needle to create soft, textured landscapes. These works are not representations of specific places, but expressions of how I experience nature, both physically and emotionally.
Though the work appears calm, it holds a quiet tension. It exists between comfort and unease, where stillness is never complete.

This duality reflects my experience with mental health. Making something beautiful is not a simply a choice, but a way of moving through difficult periods.
A familial history of textile-making lingers in the process, surfacing through instinct rather than intention, as if the material carries its own embedded knowledge. Mother, grandmothers, great-grandmothers - you are with me, always.

The work does not resolve these tensions, but holds space for them, inviting viewers to reflect on their own emotional landscapes and the cyclical nature of feeling, where periods of sadness can give way, in time, to joy.