Nature is inspiration for artist

Meet May artist, Jean Jensen, at Meadowlark Gallery, Friday, May 6 from 5-7pm.
Spring greenhouse plantings by Gardener’s Paradise will also be on display during the opening weekend.
Jean is a western Nebraska artist known for bold colors in her watercolor and oil paintings of flowers and landscapes.
She loves to capture the endless beauty of her flower beds and the natural world around her through painting. Jean enjoys sharing her art work and having her artwork in homes, galleries and businesses around the country.
Jean grew up in a small town in rural western Nebraska, inspired by a mother who encouraged art and a wider worldview.
She first attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but soon transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her love of art and the Impressionists grew during many visits to the Chicago Art Institute.
Determined to see the world, Jean traveled through Europe and visited many of the world’s best art museums, worked on an anthropological dig in Israel, and then moved to Kenya. There, she earned her master’s in sociology at the University of Nairobi.
After travelling around the world she found that she loves living in rural western Nebraska on their sixty acres of wild land with a little creek and lots of wildlife, taking daily walks with her husband and dog.
Traveling allowed Jean to see western Nebraska with a new perspective and to see the natural, largely untouched beauty of her childhood home. Returning to Nebraska, she began her 35-year career as an artist.
Jean paints local subjects, combining her passion for the region with the aliveness and energy that she experienced in Kenya. She is skilled in watercolor, pastel and oil, using the raw emotive power of brilliant colors to capture the essence of flowers, wildlife, people and landscapes.
Jean’s work can also be seen at The Most Unlikely Place Gallery and at www.jeanjensenart.com.  For more on the gallery see www.themostunlikelyplace.com
Meadowlark Gallery is open every Friday and Saturday evening from 5-7. The gallery has been supported by volunteers and the Perkins County Area Arts Council since 2003.