Pd Jensen

The Artist:
PD Jensen is a Seattle-born northwest-native teaching artist with a passion for drawing and painting. Drawing, he agrees, is a critical foundation, regardless of medium employed, and classical background teaches best the lessons we must learn to break.
Although 7 years with Toastmasters has gained him comfort to speak in public, even have people watch as he paints, he is rather quiet and shy, and finds himself mostly in solitude in front of an easel in his studio or out on his excursions in plein air painting.
His unrelenting mantra, as he puts it, "is simplify. Simplify shapes, simplify composition...always more easily said than done."


Murals:
In 2015 PD was asked to create a series of murals at a new apartment building, Areté, in Kirkland, WA. The success of these led to another large mural at the front of the building that included the painting of an old upright piano to match the design. PD then created a position as resident artist at Areté, and for a period of about six months he created five more murals at Areté and at another property. Mural work was instrumental in the focus on simplifying design.


Haiku:
It started about May of 2015. Rather than daily journaling, a practice the consistency of w...

Formal training:
“Zip. Zero. Nada… Wait, there were a couple months at the New School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, back in….’78?”
PD Jensen has been mostly “self-taught”, a term he finds true even of those who earn a degree, or study under a mentor. Through studying works of the Masters and of many others, the practice of trial and error—and error, and error—eventually brings forth understanding of light, color, depth and movement.
“There’s no substitute for doing the work,” he says, “and it really never ends.”
Taking what appears to have been the bumpy road in his training, PD finds its benefit in being more sensitive and tuned into the challenges of his own students, especially the serious ones.

Shows:
PD did not enter into shows in earnest until about 2010, following a divorce, therapy, and quitting his construction job cold-turkey to pursue a living through his art, the latter being “the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done, but I’ve been more alive than ever since.”
Shows have all been in the Seattle area and with limited exposure. VALA Gallery, Redmond; Parklane Gallery, Kirkland; Full Moon Gallery, Gig Harbor; Jamieson’s Furniture Gallery, Bellevue.
Juried art shows include: the Edmonds Art Festival; Kenmore Art Show; Ida Culver Broadview, Seattle; Pacific Regent, Bellevue; University House-Wallingford, Seattle; University House-Issaquah, Borders Bookstore (Redmond Town Center); artEAST, Issaquah; Blakely Hall, Issaquah; Hilman City Collaboratory, Seattle; Madrona Wine Merchants, Seattle.