Dee Jenkins lives and works in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Artist Statement

In 1964, when I first attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa, I had no intention of becoming a painter. Then I heard the music of Thelonious Monk. Shortly thereafter I quit school, and started on the long, and endlessly unpredictable path of becoming a painter, a path that took me from Dickinson College in Pa, to American University in Washington, D.C., and on to The Cooper Union, Hunter College, Parsons School of Design, The New York Academy of Art, and The Art Students League, all located in Manhattan. In addition, I have spent many wonderful hours drawing the figure at Minerva Durham’s Drawing Studio, also in New York.

My work includes both drawing and painting. It has shifted back and forth between figurative and non -figurative, and at present, exists in a space informed by both. I am extremely grateful for my education, but I am also extremely grateful to have “lived to tell about it”, and it is my hope that I will have the courage to continue to find my way, informed by what I have learned in school, without being too beholden to it.

I taught for many years at The County College of Morris in Randolph, Nj, and have also been an adjunct at The College of St. Elizabeth in Madison, NJ, Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, and CUNY’s College of Staten Island.

In addition to being inspired by art and artists from all around the world and all historical periods, music and dancing have sustained and continue to sustain my explorations. In particular, listening to Jazz, and dancing Latin and Tango, have guided and influenced me as much as (or at times more than), visits to museums, art galleries, and libraries.