Carol Jenkins

All my life I have loved the out of doors—especially wild places. There is something unpredictable about wild terrain, exciting, a little risky. It is also why I am drawn to abstract painting. It is the unexpected that delights: a wildflower pushing up through decaying leaves, an accidental smear on the canvas that leaves a beautiful mark I did not try to make. These are gifts that satisfy me.

Just like a forest, an abstract painting grows into itself and cannot be known ahead of time: it is a call and response, moment by moment, and can never be replicated. My painting process starts with spontaneous mark-making, then the laying on of bold shapes, followed by layers of acrylic or oil paint that I draw into and scrape away. Once an interesting line or color pulls the painting in a direction I want to follow, I build the layers of paint more deliberately into a composition that incorporates both the quiet expanse and bountiful energy of the wilderness I love.

The process of naming a painting is also important to me. I want the name to be a window into the painting that also allows the viewer to move anywhere else they want to go. I often spend a lot of time looking at a painting, engaging in an intuitive process of association until a word or idea pulls me toward a name that feels right. Playing with words is similar to exploring with paint: it is the unexpected that moves me.

My work has been shown in galleries across the West Coast and has been collected nationally.

Solo and Two-person Exhibitions

• 2021 Gallery at Wilder, Orinda, CA

• 2018 Montclair Gallery, Oakland, CA

• 2017 Siskiyou Art Museum,

Dunsmuir, CA

• 2017 Liberty Arts Gallery, Yreka, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 2023 Jen Tough Gallery, The Bright

Side, Santa Fe, NM

• 2023 Art Expo New York, Jen Tough

Gallery

• 2023 West Coast Biennial at Turtle

Bay, juror Shelly Willis

• 2022 Red Dot Miami, Jen Tough

Gallery

• 2022 Artist Alliance exhibition,

Above & Below, juror Jennifer

Perlmutter

• 2022 Museum of Northern

California, Celebrate

Red, Yellow, Blue, Chico, CA

• 2022 O’Hanlon Center for the Arts,

Strictly Abstract, Mill Valley, CA

• 2022 Gallery Baume des Pelerins,

Sablet, France

• 2022 Hopkins Art Center,

Minneapolis, MN

• 2022 Jen Tough’s Artist Alliance

juried exhibition, Green

• 2021 Hallie Brown Ford gallery,

Roseberg, OR

• 2021 Dab Art Gallery, Los Angeles

• 2021 Liberty Arts Gallery, Yreka, CA

• 2021 Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery,

Lafayette CA

• 2021 Turtle Bay West Coast

Biennial, Redding, CA, juried by

L.A. Times art critic David Pagel

• 2021 Maude Kerns Art Center,

Eugene, OR

• 2020 Marin Society of Artists, CA

• 2020 Danville Theatre Art Gallery,

• 2020 Las Laguna Gallery, Laguna

Beach, CA

• 2020 Danville Theatre Art Gallery

• 2019 Art Works Downtown,

San Rafael, CA

• 2019 Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA

• 2019 Liberty Arts Gallery

• 2019 JenniferPerlmutter@theBank

pop-up exhibition, Lafayette CA

• 2018 Liberty Arts Gallery

• 2018 Jennifer Perlmutter’s Gallery

• 2018 Abrams Claghorn Gallery,

Albany, CA

Publications

• 2022 Art in the Time of the Corona

by Dab Art Co.

• 2022 Eye of Wonder, Gallery

Baume des Pelerins

• 2022 Contemporary Artist

Magazine by Jen Tough Gallery

• 2021 Artists of the Bay Area by

Jen Tough Gallery

• 2021 Wild Lands by Jen Tough

Gallery

• 2019 Sanctuary by Arc Gallery

• 2018 Have You Heard Us Yet?

Abrams Claghorn Gallery

Awards

• 2021 West Coast Biennial at Turtle

Bay, awarded second place by

David Pagel, Art Critic for the

L.A. Times and cash prize