About
Jen started her life of art young – really young – by regularly taking her place at the chalkboard to teach her fellow first-grade classmates (ages 6-7) how to draw. From there, she developed her talents further, and by the age of thirteen was selling pencil portraits to the parents of her middle school classmates. She hand-lettered signs for local businesses, painted sets for plays, and revisited the front of the classroom again, this time teaching a variety of art techniques to pre-teens from the same community.
Art consumed the majority of her high school curriculum, and art school was the logical next step. She attended The Art Institute of Pittsburgh where, convinced she should have a ‘practical’ art career, she graduated with an Associate’s Degree in Industrial Design Technology.
She reinvented her skill set by teaching herself how to use a Mac and by the mid 1990s was heading into a career with a major print company, where she was the senior digital pre-press technician for six years. The natural evolution for her digital work in print, was to cross over into web work, where she has designed and built websites for clients ranging from small businesses and start-ups, to international media companies.
Though her evolving work life has been rewarding, nothing has managed to take the place of paint and pencils. Her passions are art, photography, and writing – and they have found their rightful place front and centre again.
Jen uses acrylic paints, markers, pens, pencils, and watercolours, but has experimented with most mediums at some point. Abstract painting is a recent focus, however the human form is a recurring subject as well. Her illustrations are more whimsical and she is developing some characters for books for children.
Inspirations include Rothko, Cy Twombly, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Katy Moran, and several talented artists and photographers on the internet. Ideas can come from anywhere, but she is a compulsive shutterbug, and frequently uses spontaneous photography as a preliminary sketch for paintings.
Above: The artist participating in the first-ever Maidenhead art market, Art on the Street. December 2009.