Acrylic plates with Akua inks and stenciled material ready to print
Monoprints - Painting with Inks on Plexiglass
After years of exclusively painting with oils on canvas and wood panels, making monoprints was something I wanted to experiment with to expand my creative options for expressing the recurring archetypal themes and motifs that continue to interest me: life cycles of growth, death and rebirth in nature and consciousness, the archetypal feminine and feminist art, and animism. Printmaking has been liberating in that it opens up the possibility for chance movements and marks of abstraction to seamlessly intermingle with representational elements and symbolic forms. Using Akua brand oil-based inks, I mix my own color palettes and employ layering – much as I did when oil painting - to achieve dynamic movements in the work, infusing archetypal images with my own creative energy, bringing them to life.
Painting a Passion for Life
Art-making is how I connect with life. I experience the creative process as a path of self-discovery and transformation. Through painting, I explore connections between human, animal and natural worlds. The human face and flesh, animal eyes, skins, bones and feathers speak to me revealing life’s wonder and mystery. Inspiration for the work comes from sources ranging from ancient wisdom traditions to modern depth-psychology and contemporary physics; timeless philosophies suggesting the inter- connectedness of all life, and reminding us of an instinctive orientation towards relatedness where seeming opposites of matter and spirit, masculine and feminine, darkness and light exist in harmony. Working with archetypal images culled from nature, myth, art history and and my own dreams and reflections, a montage of colorful visual impressions emerges, forming new narratives celebrating life’s complexity, diversity and unity; and also it’s amazing beauty.
"...[Jenkins'] painting style is urgent, juicy, expressive and inquisitive."
- Ron Schira, The Reading Eagle