Jennifer Tan of Pippin Studio – Designer Spotlight

Jennifer Tan is the talented artist & designer behind Pippin Studio. Recently in their newsletter, The Needlepointer profiled her. With their permission, we have this profile as our guest post today.

Here’s how Tan describes herself, “Almost every canvas I paint now teaches me so much, and my head is crammed with thoughts about what I want to try next. Even the stinkers I paint teach me a lot, although I usually hide the evidence and paint over them fairly quickly. I love whatever time I can find painting, get antsy if it’s been more than a few days, and shake my head at how fast my painting time goes past. Unbelievably fast. Sort of freakishly fast. Sometimes I’ll have a late-in-the-day chai to help perk me up and instead of heading to bed I’ll head to the easel, where staying up late painting and making marks feels like a wickedly wonderful decadence.

“I admire artists who are together enough to have formal philosophies and definite paths of exploration. For now, I’m bounding around trying a bit of a lot of things, finding my own style, learning buckets and having the time of my life. Trying not to feel intimidated by how much there is to learn, and try, and figure out and think about. Getting paint on my fingers. Living the life! I hope this website can reflect that a bit. Thanks for taking a look!

” ‘Above all watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.’ — Roald Dahl”

In addition to the Pippin line, Tan has recently introduced canvases based on her paintings, called Jennifer Tan Paints. The shop tells us about the background of Tara’s Chair, pictured above. “I have a favorite wooden chair at my house. After happily getting it for free from my parents I sheepishly paid what seemed like a lot for bright yellow-orange paint and the necessary tinted primer to make sure it glowed like yellow-orange chairs must do, but it’s been a friend that makes me happy ever since. It’s been a subject of quite a few paintings so I figure I’ve paid off that expensive paint by now. For this painting, I decided to change the colour to white and it ended up being one of my favorite versions, and this was cemented by it being bought by one of my favorite collectors.”