About Jenny
Jenny studied painting at Saint Martin’s and the Royal Academy in London. Her paintings have been widely exhibited and she has also illustrated children’s books and animated films. Jenny has taught at all levels and is the author of many practical books on drawing and painting.
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My fascination with paints and painting began when I was a child, growing up on my grandparents' hillside farm in the Derbyshire Peak District. On top of the corner wardrobe in my grandparents' bedroom was an old biscuit tin, too rusty to open. In it, I knew, were my grandmother's oil paints, put away for the last time in 1918 when my grandfather came home from the First World War to run the farm and to marry the woman who was then a teaching assistant in the village school and a keen amateur painter - my grandmother.
The young school mistress became a farmer’s wife, a busy mother of four, and with no time for painting. The tin had not been opened for nearly half a century until, when I was ten years old, I took it out into the garden and banged the lid off with a stone. Inside were a dozen or so small tubes of used colour in perfect condition, the Winsor and Newton labels faded and oily but still readable. Ivory black. Zinc white. Rose madder.
Even now, after a lifetime of painting, teaching and writing books about painting, the smell of oil paint still reminds me of that rusty tin and the magical colours inside. It also reminds me of my grandmother, a hard-working country woman with no time to paint, and I think how different things are today and how lucky we are.
Although much of my time is now taken up with writing, I still have time to paint and to make pots, which are another passion. However, my favourite moments are those spent talking to other artists – learning from those whose work I admire, and encouraging and envying those who are just setting out on the amazing adventure of learning to paint.
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