Jenny Graham

Jenny Graham has been working as an artist in Somerset since moving there in 1984. She studied both in New York and Bristol, where, in 1997 she received an MA in Printmaking from the University of the West of England. With a long-held, firm need to interpret the visual world, her expertise ranges from painting to printmaking to video work. She focuses on environment, memory and history to create pieces that draw the viewer into new worlds, both real and imagined.

Her recent work is inspired predominantly by the English countryside and her paintings explore the specific aspects of each location - those things which make it unique. Working on-site in the landscape she makes quick sketches and notations on colour, time of day, date, weather and location. Back in her studio, she combines this information with her emotional and visual recollection of the place.   In her recent paintings she employs oil and cold wax to achieve textural variety, building up layer upon layer of colour, adding and subtracting  paint until the final image emerges from repeated exploration of her subject and the picture surface . This slow and contemplative process results in work of appealing subtlety and variation.  She says of her work:

“I seek the magic in the visual - an image which goes beyond the obvious and into the realm of memory and transformation.  Paintings sometimes begin as one thing and end up entirely altered as they take on their own lives. This voyage of pictorial discovery is both challenging and exciting “

Jenny’s work has been exhibited widely both regionally and nationally in such prestigious exhibitions as The Discerning Eye, the National Open Art Exhibition, National Original Print Exhibition, the Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition, the Royal Watercolour Society and the RWA.
Her landscapes been commissioned and purchased by several large hospitals as well as organisations and private collectors.

She is a member of the RWA Artists Network, Fingerprint and Somerset Printmakers and regularly teaches a course in Printmaking at the Dove Studios near Glastonbury.

Photo credit: @Richard Thomlinson

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