About Jenny
Artists Statement
I am a representational painter working primarily in oil. I've painted portraits and still lifes, but my current focus is what I call "Flower Portraits": small, intimate paintings of one or two flowers.
To me, flowers are the purest form of beauty. Their organic forms, layered structure, translucent petals, and subtly shifting colors make them both a joy and a challenge to paint. They hold real mysteries, too. It's fascinating to me that their beauty is a strategy, evolved to attract the pollinators the plant needs. I find the ephemeral form of flowers intriguing; they are always in motion, opening, widening, fading. When I paint a flower, I'm capturing a single instant of a dance.
Every flower of a species has the same basic architecture. The tight, mathematically precise spiraling form of the ranunculus repeats in every flower. Yet, no two flowers are ever alike. The same structural DNA produces endless variety - it's the miracle of organic form. Like faces, each flower has its own personality. Hence the "portraits."
One of the things I love most about art is the level of attention it asks of us. If you want to truly see something, draw or paint it. I've always loved small things in nature, and I believe that if you take the time to really look, a single flower, a spiderweb, or a coiling root contains the universe. Painting a flower is my way of honoring it, and all the small, overlooked things of beauty it stands for.
My paintings are time- and labor-intensive and draw on every bit of my classical training. I paint in many thin layers, and pay careful attention to value, composition, color, and edges, using techniques that date back to the Dutch Masters. I've been inspired by many painters, classical and contemporary, among them John Singer Sargent, Caravaggio, and Katie Whipple.
With my art, I seek to notice beauty and turn it into something new. I want to add beauty to the world. It's really that simple.
Why Small Flower Paintings?
We live in a mixed world, full of wonderful things, but also suffering from division, injustice, consumerism, and a relentless pull toward fast, shallow lives. Some days it's enough to make you lose hope. There are many ways to fight back, and there's room for all of them. I deeply respect artists who protest directly. My way draws on my own strength: wonder.
Years ago I saw an art book about the puddles on a city sidewalk and all the reflections they held over the course of a year. I never looked at a puddle the same way again. That's what I hope my paintings will do. I want you to enjoy the painting, but I also want you to notice that I'm noticing, and inspire you to go notice for yourself. I especially want you to get excited to notice the small, beautiful things in nature: a flower, a leaf, an acorn, the underside of a fern. Take the time to really look, and it's miraculous what you'll see. For example: Deep in a flower's heart, where daylight can't reach, the color glows warm and intense. As you move towards the outside of the flower, daylight brushes and shines through the petals, making the colors cooler and more delicate. Beauty like this is everywhere, free and available to anyone who stops to look.
I hope these small paintings can be little portals to wonder - an antidote to despair and fatigue. Beauty, especially natural beauty, is food for the soul. It lifts us, keeps us strong, and brings us joy.
About Jenny
I grew up in Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, surrounded by mountains, redwoods, beaches, and all the wonders of nature. As a child I loved to draw and paint; my mother used to say I was born with a pencil in my hand. But I have many interests, and in college I set fine art aside to pursue them.
That detour turned out to be a long one. I studied at UC Berkeley and then at St. John's College in Santa Fe, reading the Great Books of Western civilization, from Plato to Einstein. I earned a Master of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and spent three years in Tokyo at Kenzo Tange Associates, a fascinating professional and cultural experience. I then spent twenty years in New York, working as a freelance architect and raising my three children. Creativity ran through all of it, but not drawing and painting.
Then, when my youngest was about twelve and I could finally take a breath, I passed a flyer on the street for watercolor classes at a local church. My old excitement stirred, and I signed up. I was 49. Who knew that one class would open a whole new chapter of my life? I went on to study at the Art Students League, and when my family moved back to Marin in 2013, I sought out formal training. I found the Sadie Valeri Atelier in San Francisco, a renowned classical realist atelier led by one of today's living masters, and spent four years there training in rigorous academic drawing and painting.When the atelier closed in 2020, several fellow students and I founded Liberty Hill Studio, a shared studio in San Francisco's Mission District, where we build on our classical foundations to make work of our own. It's now my beloved art community and painting home. I've exhibited and sold my work at Studio Gallery in San Francisco and at our annual Open Studios.
Looking back, I think I've always been drawn to the mathematics of form. Architecture gave me its precision; flowers gave me its life. I've come full circle, back to the place and the passion I started with. What a joy and a surprise it is to be here.