Jenny Gini Biography The only child of a single parent, I had a fairly solitary childhood so drawing became my main source of entertainment. While my mother worked or ran errands I often filled my time alone with art and crafts of any kind. In kindergarten I won a school art contest for a silhouetted yucca plant with a warm sunset. The following year I won a city wide contest for a Christmas poster and had my picture taken with my poster, which appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal. At age 10, my mother enrolled me in private art lessons on Saturday mornings. I remember hating getting up early and missing the best cartoons, but as soon as I began to paint I’d forget all about everything else. In high school I took every art class I could get into. Though the skill and talent of some of my peers intimidated me at times, being in art class was my favorite part of the day. I moved to California as a young adult; first Santa Cruz, and later San Francisco where I graduated from SFSU with a bachelor's in Fine Art. I returned to my hometown, amazed with the beauty of the desert I’d taken for granted in my youth, and began teaching art at the middle school and high school level. When I met my husband, he and his family encouraged me to focus on my own art. For the last five years I’ve been actively participating in building a body of work and displaying my art in a variety of venues. Events moved us to the Seattle area a couple of years ago, and I now call Redmond, WA home. The environments that I’ve had the pleasure of living in play a role in my art making. Influences of my observations of landscapes as well as people can be seen in all of my paintings. |