We recently connected with Elizabeth Jenness and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Elizabeth thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

At some point in my youth I was struck with a need to express visually. I had discovered that I could say things visually I couldn’t say verbally. There were artists around me who were working where I could observe them. I believe I was influenced by witnessing their absorbed attention and focus. I had been exposed to the arts all along but In my teens I made choices for art in my education and took advantage of really great opportunities to learn and develop skills from talented artists and thinkers, I became serious about pursuing visual art and chose The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to continue my schooling. I was 17 when I started and I definitely had maturing to do and I needed to support myself as I went thru school. In school I was trying different mediums and drawing from the figure regularly . I did not come back to painting till later on in my four years there. One of the jobs I found was in a theater and this connection developed into a membership in a union of theatrical stage employees which I retain to this day. The work could be intermittent, and afforded time to create. My second skill building course came in Tampa Florida where I earned a degree in commercial art which was a stepping stone but ultimately not where I wanted to land as it was computer oriented by then. Eventually I found a classical Atelier in Sarasota Florida, now called Miano Academy, and over ten years I trained and practiced and then taught there. A wonderful experience. Skill building continues as I consider combining the observational with the imaginative and what that looks like for me .

Elizabeth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As is true with so many others I started my visual journey early on. I am the granddaughter of a painter who lived in an active artists community. She influenced me a lot as did a few other greatly talented artists who taught me before I entered art school. Honestly, creating visually has been a very deep part of who I am, a need if you will, and I don’t think I probably had a choice. The path manifested before me. Learning has been life long and continues to this day and now teaching has been a way to both give and learn. I am a painter but I also have had a career in theater as a technician supporting creative endeavors in light, sound, set, orchestration, story and vision. Theater is a visually rich environment, every aspect an artistic decision. I am recently retired from theater work and I continue to paint regularly as well as teach a classical realist approach to drawing and painting. I teach with my colleague Kerry Vosler in her Atelier as well as privately. I paint portraits, still life and landscape and have been called upon to use my skills in Illustrative creative problem solving. My personal practice produces finished drawings and paintings which are for sale, but it is the process, the activity, the ideas, the joy of it, which brings me to the easel . With a certain mastery of form, color and execution in my grasp, as it relates to what is before me, I now work toward an intellectual and imaginative aspect which requires more discipline and study, I strive to use my visual language skills in the service of others and of beauty and of a universal spirit that is felt by everyone.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In late 2018 the building in which I had my studio, a studio I’d been in for many years, changed hands. It was an unfortunate occurrence for the majority of the professional creatives who occupied those wonderful spaces in that old cigar factory, we had been a community . In short time the chaos and disruption was too much. Before the building was shut down by the city due to the lawlessness of the new owners I got out. I had no new space to go too and so I brought the very core of my supplies and equipment into my home and put the rest in storage. I have continued to work consistently for 5 years in a cramped little space unable to find an adequate alternative. As the dynamic of my life shifts to more focus on painting and teaching. I have finally taken action to create a larger space on the home site that will allow for an expansion of ideas and execution and I can begin to feel a weight lifting.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I would say my mission is to elevate my world, THE world, up into a higher and finer expression thru considering the patterns. the beauty and the intelligence in the world. It is my goal to utilize and build upon this visual language and it’s hierarchy’s, and to use my natural understanding of spatial and color relationships to illustrate ideas.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://elizabethj.faso.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-jenness-72380b2a