MICHÈLE JENKINSON, a landscape oil painter, grew up in New York City and studied painting at The Cooper Union where she received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts. Faced with the realization that she couldn’t pay for her art supplies, she applied to law school and practiced corporate law for 30 years in New York.  As she was approaching retirement, she took up painting again, taking classes at the Art Students League.  She then left her corporate life for good and moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  For the past 10+ years she has split her time between Jackson Hole and Silver City, New Mexico, where she has finally been able to devote serious time to her painting.  Her work is currently being exhibited at the Soul River Gallery in Silver City. She is a long standing member of the Teton Plein Air Painters, a group that gathers weekly to paint en plein air in and around Jackson Hole.  Her paintings have also been exhibited at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, the Blue Dome Gallery in Silver City, and other venues in Jackson Hole and New York.  

 

      Of her work, Jenkinson says “I feel compelled to paint in order to make a connection with nature.  I constantly find myself unexpectedly struck by simple things…the billowing of a cloud mass, the quietness of a horse grazing in open pasture, the end of the day being expressed in a glorious sunset.  In my paintings, I try to replicate the emotional response I have when I am experiencing those moments.  I try to recreate these experiences for myself, but also hope a viewer of my work can enter my world and feel the ‘sense of place’ I have tried to capture."

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