I never heard of this artist, Paul Jenkins. I stumbled uppon one of his paintings in an old Art History book that mom had and used for her career for Fashion Design in FIT. It's a book that has always been around, a real piece of jelewery, I like to see it that way, thats book is my age, even older, I think it's around 23 years old to 25.
Fact is, I always saw that book and looked at the pictures and all, one day I read a couple of things there and it wasn't till this week that I grabbed it (for the 100th time) this time to actually see the whole thing. I was doing some investigation about Egyptian and Greek culture symbols, I sort of found what I was looking for but not entirely satisfied, even though I found what I needed to with those two cultures, I kept on going, went through Pop Art (I had no idea it had Pop Art, haha) and then I got to a couple of artist's that were familiar to me already and others I had never heard of, like Paul Jenkins.
Why was I so amazed with his art? What called drew my eye to his painting and made me want to look for more?
I think it was the colors he used and the way he applies the color to his canvases, even the movement... It makes me think that there's a free spirit in his paintings, they just flow, float, they "let it be"... so... toucheable and just amusing. If music couple be expressed by colors, it would be his paintings.
A little bit of Paul Jenkins...
His paintngs represent spirit, vitality and invention of post World War II American abstraction. Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1923. Inspird part by the catalysmic challange of Pollock and the total metaphysical consumption of Mark Tobey.
He had a great interest in eastern religion and philosophy, the study of I Ching, along with the writings of Carl Jung prompted Jenkins turned toward inward reflection and mysticisim which have dominated his aesthetic as well as his life.
I recognize he is a very talented paintor, he's creative, original because you can see right away his signature in his paintings,
His mane passion was watercolor, eventually he moved on to oil painting, arylic, then sculpture, graphics, collage, film and theatre.
I recognize that he is a very talented and unique paintor, in my opinion. I will say that like his paintings better than J. Pollocks. Yes, Pollock's art is communicating something because of the intensity of use of color and the force of of how he splats the paint, but I feel his paintings agressive rather than Pauls, his paintings are soothing, moving, even relaxing... passive! that's the word I'm looking for.
Anyhow... This is his website if some of you guys want to check it out:
http://www.pauljenkins.net/
Note: While I was investigating about him, I noticed that when he does sculpture they are usually animals, especially bunnies, the cats and then dogs... some prary dogs amongs others.
