Jenny is a graduate of the University of Ulster with a degree in Fine and Applied Art, where she specialised in ceramics. She later opened a pottery, card and gift shop while also establishing an illustration business before focusing fully on painting.
Jenny is inspired by the natural world and the urban green spaces that surround her in the city. She is in search for colour and life growing that provokes memories and the emotional significance of some plants revealing colours that disclose the seasons. The flowers that bloom each not lasting long but returning to remind of years past. When the memories are difficult then the life in the blossoming flower can be a tonic. She hopes that the viewers find healing in her paintings, a comfort and relief.
Whether it's a hidden splash of colour off a city path or the vibrant flowers or fruits she encounters in everyday life, Jenny's paintings evoke a sense of nostalgia and joy. Drawing from childhood memories of making daisy chains, hiding in rhododendron bushes, or a bloom of purple hydrangeas in a grandmother's garden, her work invites viewers to reconnect with the simple pleasures of nature. Her botanical compositions are more than just representations of flowers; they embody the emotional significance of these plants-the wedding bouquet of peonies, a mothers favourite sweet peas, or the forget-me-nots that serve as a tender reminder of a friend.
Jenny's paintings aim to offer a hopeful, uplifting experience, drawing on the changing seasons as symbols of renewal and the promise of brighter days ahead. With a keen eye for the beauty in everyday moments, she celebrates the transformative power of nature to heal and inspire.
Jenny's first oil paint application is fluid and spontaneous, reacting with the paint that she thinly mixes on the canvas letting the colour bleed with the grain. She uses the brush and knife to blend and drip thinking about light and shade in an undergrowth and foliage. Making marks that appear as twigs and leaves in the painting background with little spots of light shining through that later reveals as sky.
She then paints as if drawing the forms of the branches, stems and flowers creating movement in the leaves and petals that shape the layout. She adds layers to create depth and shadows in the colours and tones of the paint.
As the painting process moves on she looks at details in the closer flowers to show a focus of each petal applying layers of oil paint that develops into impasto that feels sculptural in its application. She hopes to attract attention to the details in her paintings as well as an over all sense of bringing the outside in through the painting
Jenny is now working on a new body of work looking at fruit trees and plants with a wish to evoke happy thoughts of caring for produce and thoughts of tasty treats they might bring.