Pensive Painting

Jenni is an award-winning, multi exhibited, multi commissioned, successful artist, turning professional in 2004. Commissioned for portraits and camel paintings from 2004-2015 and regularly selling dancer inspired art from 2006-2019. In February 2021, Jenni had an epiphany, for years she had been involved in self improvement, because growing up as a small child, she believed she was unlovable and was not good enough and she now realised that she had lived with chronic unpredictable stress and trauma for most of her early life. Whilst reading a book on trauma "The body keeps the score" by Bessel Van Der kolk, it put into words things that Jenni had been feeling for a number of years. Jenni realised how many toxins her body had been trying to deal consistently with and how her body was trying to keep her safe, despite constantly being a state of fight flight or freeze. Stress was like an open tab whirling in the background, creating all sorts of chemical imbalances and despite all of the previous studies she had done, she could see, she was still in a perpetual state of hyper awareness. It was at this point she had her epiphany. "I saw my body as something separate from me, like another being trying desperately to keep me safe. My body was swallowing up the poisonous toxins of stress to try and limit the impact it would have on me, and so for the first time in years I suddenly had this enormous respect for my body. I had this enormous love for all the work it had been doing to keep me safe" Jenni believes a human body to be the vessel for the soul, the inner being, the connection to universal energy and she believes it has done everything in its power to protect her, for which she is now very grateful. The universe has always given her visuals and in this instance it gave her the visual of a peacock. Peacocks, Jenni later discovered, eat poison to protect their environment and the poison they eat creates their vivid colours. In February 2021, Jenni began her journey with watercolours, Having previously painted in acrylics and mixed media. In June 2021 Jenni became more interested in painting the human form and especially women. Jenni believes women are beautiful resilient and enduring, however, she wanted to try to maintain the link with peacocks and so decided to use their feathers as part of the painting process. Using them like a quill.