Whilst I am sad to admit that I never met Jen Trute in person, I knew her art.
In the past, whenever I've been too swift to dismiss the superfluous excesses of San Diego's art scene, it's always been a welcome reminder to myself that Jen Trute more than eclipsed the chasm of vacuousness and artifice, with the astonishing yardstick of her mastery.
Technically of course, she was flawless,tossing off the kind of flourishes that would leave the best of us slack jawed on the periphery, but her work also had that rare thing of conceptual clarity-never suffering the obliqueness that so often subdues the viewer, and is a perfect get out card for so many surrealist poseurs.
Despite the darker themes, her work was also as disarmingly bright and airy as the long hot summer days that she spent in her Carlsbad studio, where I paid my respects yesterday.
Like I said, I didn't know Jen,but from the meticulous way that she organized her brushes to the hundreds of carefully mixed swatches she compiled, I can tell you that she was the "real deal". So many of us are just charlatans in the incredible, remarkable wake of her work.
We are all richer for her astonishing legacy and she shall be sorely missed.
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