Water Street Studios' Jaime Foster inspires in multimedia

Jaime Foster has an unshakeable bond with the natural world, incorporating the environment into her creativity and art. Foster draws inspiration from the deep connection she feels with nature in her work. “From a distance, my paintings will simultaneously resemble vast glacial landscapes and intricate microscopic patterns, acting as complementary and contradictory to each other in an encircling game,” she said as part of her artist’s statement. “The natural elements which flow from an emotional outpouring create fractal natural patterns that draw the viewer into a world each viewer translates through their own perception of the natural world. Different aspects of each of my works can be viewed as a mountainside, cell structure, flowing rapids and perplexing botany patterns – all combined and swirled together – to create timeless works of art that could be appreciated at any time in human history.”

Foster is both an alumni and newer artist with Water Street Studios having been a resident in 2012 and reinstated again a handful of months ago in 2024. After moving back to the region in 2012, Foster made Water Street something of a creative epicenter for her work. “There was such a great community of strong talent and much support for the arts in the area,” she said. “My first show in the area was a two-person exhibit, at Batavia Fine Arts Center. I nearly sold all my work and one of the theater patrons purchased two of my paintings, one to hang in the theaters permanent collection.”

A few years ago, in 2019, Foster welcomed the chance to create something new in her repertoire, a 3-dimensional, mixed media commissioned piece for a wedding gift. “Though it came more naturally than a challenge, it takes a different way of thinking to work sculpturally,” she said. “It was a success and has been a work that still gets high praise.”

For as long as Foster can remember she has pursued her own imagination and artistry, often spending hours at the table making, drawing and creating. “When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I was gifted my first art easel,” she said. “After I graduated high school, I began becoming increasingly interested in photography. My friends and I had our own sort of camera clubs, and we would visit abandoned houses and farms. I was drawn to urban decay and the process of nature taking its course. I started working as a freelance photographer for several local newspapers and a couple years later started my own photography business.”

Foster grew a successful business with photography but grew tired and needed to chase her creativity to new heights. “In 2007, my husband and I put the photography business on hold, sold our house and moved to Seattle,” she said. “Living in the Pacific Northwest was incredibly inspiring. Art was everywhere and being surrounded by so much beauty was the charge I needed to dive into creating again…we rented a little house with a tiny art studio on the property, and I would shut myself in there and paint for hours on end. I fell in love with the process, and it was then that I developed my style.

Within a few months and only a handful of completed work, I was asked to exhibit my work in a two-person show (with my husband who’s also a painter). About 6 months later I exhibited my first solo show. Between the immediate opportunities, reaction to my work and love for the process of creating, I knew I had to make this a life choice.”

Now, Foster is excited to keep evolving in her art and exploring new angles. “For my exhibition at Water Street in March last year, I started really dipping into clay, creating 3-dimensional, sculptural works,” she said. “They were well received and I’m definitely excited to create more mixed media works, as I feel mixed media is truly my strong suit as an artist.”