The Dutch saying “a Jan Steen household” originated in the seventeenth century and has come to be used to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, are the direct inspiration behind the layered, domestic scenes of Blackmon’s work.
Raised as the oldest of nine children, with three herself, Blackmon takes an approach to her work that is at once autobiographical and fictional. Blackmon sees life’s most poignant moments as a fusion of fantasy and reality, the mythic amidst chaos.