Artist

Biography

The ability of a work of art to uplift our spirits is its greatest attribute. If it can inspire and transport the viewer to another level beyond the physical or the visual, then it has accomplished something beyond the human act of its creation.

I am inexorably drawn to the sea. I paint portraits, still lifes and landscapes, but the effects of sun and clouds over the water are the most compelling. They also demand everything the palette has to offer—and more. I'm painting form but always prospecting for light, striving to see a deeper harmony, to open the door to pure energy.

Born in 1943, David Jenks was raised and educated in Massachusetts, graduating from Williams College with a degree in Art History in 1965. He also attended the Yale Summer School of Music and Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

He began drawing at an early age, inspired by the illustrations of the Brandywine artists, N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle, in books from his father’s childhood. A professional commitment to art was delayed until the mid-1980s when he began painting outdoors. A year and a half on California’s Big Sur and Mendocino coasts resulted in his first solo exhibition in 1986. After a move to the Southwest, he divided his painting time for the next seven years between Arizona and the coast of Maine. Preferring the sea to the desert, Jenks eventually moved back to the northern California coast, where he has made Mendocino his base since 1993.

His paintings have been featured in galleries across the United States and Japan, and articles on his work have appeared in Southwest Art, Art of the West, American Art Collector and American Artist magazines. Several of his images have been published, most prominently now by Editions Ltd., and his paintings are included in corporate collections such as MBNA America, Fluor Corporation, and Raymond James Financial, Inc. In 2006, his painting “Echo” won 2nd Place in International Artist magazine’s “Seascapes, Rivers, & Lakes” competition.