Jay Jensen

Jay Jensen, who is an American citizen, got his BA from Gettysburg College in 1972, and in 1980, obtained an MFA from Colorado State University. In 2003, after a long hiatus, he rededicated himself to painting.

A common to the artist’s work is his fascination with luminous color and light. One might say that this is the work of every painter, and that would indeed be true because the artist is hesitant to attribute any other so-called “deeper” meanings to the work preferring to let the viewer make up his own mind. When trying to comment about what he is trying to express in his work, the artist is always mindful of the 20th century American painter, Edward Hopper, who was known to have said: “What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house”.

The artist is also steadfastly figurative, but he also believes that the terms figurative and abstraction are ultimately meaningless labels. All paintings represent something observed and are therefore figurative. Conversely, simply by the fact of being limited to the confines of a frame, all paintings are inevitably abstractions.

The artist enjoys the tension between the figurative and the abstract, particularly in the way he applies paint. Weeds and clouds dissolve into splatters of paint, water into layers of transparent color. What appears as representational from a distance has, when observed up close, the quality of an action painting. In addition to the preoccupations of luminous color and light, the surface texture of the canvas and the energy of the brushstrokes are of great importance.

Originally from Westchester County, New York, the artist resides in St-Lambert. He works full-time in the field of advertising and teaches painting, drawing and printmaking part time.