About Jen
Just in case you are interested, please peruse my life story and arbitrary art-related thoughts at your leisure.
My name is Jen – maker of lines, wielder of paintbrushes, lover of watercolour and whimsy.
My passions are capturing light, colour and atmosphere. I adore stories and magic. I am heavily inspired by the natural world (where infinite amounts of magic are to be found) and love all of this planet’s wee beasties. Except mozzies.
I am primarily a watercolour painter and create artworks ranging from realistic paintings to telling stories through illustration, where my passion lies.
My Backstory
I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa and since then have
put down some form of root in Cape Town, Pretoria and Pietermaritzburg. I am a
qualified veterinarian however due to many factors and ultimately my principal
belief – to prioritise that which brings joy in life – I made the decision to
leave my career to become a full-time artist. It was a choice that involved
much internal grappling, however at the end of each day (and at the end of my
life) I want to look back and say that my path fulfilled me at every turn. Every
day I wake up excited to create and that is all that matters to me, though this
journey may come with many challenges.
Some Light-Hearted Facts
- I love cats – I have two cats called Zoltan and Aria (so named after her beautiful singing voice, before anyone tells me I misspelled Arya from GoT). They are the light of my life.
- I love music.
- I love reading. Particularly fantasy. Name of the Wind and Farseer/Realm of the Elderlings are my faves.
- I am a dabbler in a variety of crafts such as knitting and sewing and bookbinding and that brief polymer clay phase and apparently recently furniture restoration.
- I love lights.
- My favourite time of day is the not-day (that is to say, the night). Particularly when there are stars out and fairy lights about.
- I love lists.
- I love flowers, especially Fynbos because you can find some truly wackadoodle blossoms that look like they germinated following some kind of meteoric cross-pollination event.
- My favourite season is of course Spring.
- I love hiking and pretending that I am a Wanderer of Old on a magical adventure. This is most effective up in the mountains, so it is convenient that I now live near a mountain.
- When I grow up I want to be a witch and a bird and also a mermaid princess.
Arbitrary art-related thoughts
I think art is often viewed as a sort of ‘non-essential’ or ‘luxury’ part of society but to me it is anything but. From broken street to opulent gallery, from rural village to city centre, across religions, nations, the span of ages, races, across the fullest range of life experiences we can find art connecting people. It may be a lonely girl in a big city, with the poster on the wall that makes her dingy room feel like home. It may be an alleyway mural spray-painted by a talented kid with no other outlet. It may be the children united over the love of a beautiful animation. The small business whose striking illustrated adverts draw people to their website. The devout worshipper whose depiction of their saviour forms an altar of prayer. Architecture that defines civilisations, portraits of icons long gone, pieces of lost societies where art is the only piece of the puzzle we have to understand who they were. In art we find identity, expression, love, power, and the ability to communicate where no one will listen to our words.
And while a piece of art may just be a ‘pretty picture’ to some, to others it could be the peace they find when they walk through the front door of their house after having been buffeted every which way by the crazy world we live in.
Interested in my work?
Check out my commissions page for more information.