Just Jerry

Short Biography

I have always been an artist. I don’t ever remember being without a crayon, colored pencil, pen or paint. When I was very small, my grandmother would give me and my cousins big brushes and a bucket of water and send us outside to “paint” the garage. I worked on that garage for hours. As I got older I entered coloring contests with my best friend each month. We’d work and work and we’d always win the big prize. At least she would. She won the queen doll; I’d come in second with the plain one. That kind of competition kept me going. In school I was entered in a gifted art and music class in the third grade sponsored by the Ford Foundation. We painted to classical music and got to spend time creating what we wanted. I couldn’t wait to get out of regular class and spend time there. When my 5th grade class went to visit the Portland Art Museum for the Vincent Van Gogh show it made a huge impression on me. While most of the other students in my class were running around the museum just happy to be out of school, I couldn’t pull myself away from Van Gogh’s drawings and paintings. At that outing I bought a small postcard of Van Gogh’s room that I kept in my room all the way through college.

I took art all through junior high and high school. I was never encouraged to think about it as a career because it wasn’t “safe” enough. I was a dancer, took ballet classes and also loved the theatre. I won a playwriting award my senior year and went on to major in Theatre Arts for my first year in college. I still drew and painted when I had time and loved working with lighting and color for the stage. My life changed my freshman year in college. I got pregnant and had a baby. I had to support, along with my new husband, more than just myself. All of my dreams of a creative life now turned to finding a career that would support my child. I worked and earned two degrees, one in Psychology and one in Education. For many years I taught school. I loved kids and was drawn into the alternative school system. I taught delinquent teenagers, teenaged prostitutes and designed programs for learning disabled and emotionally disabled children. I included art in my classroom in all subjects. I also spent my nights going to art school. I took every kind of art I could find. I divorced and was remarried to a ceramics instructor and wonderful potter who taught at Jesuit High School with me. He encouraged my art and I worked with him in ceramics for about 6 years. I started painting soon afterward and have been painting since. I now paint full time and support myself by selling my work. I also still do workshops in painting and sometimes work a little with problem children when I get a chance. I have the perfect life doing what I love

Artist Statement

     I use painting as a writer would use a diary. I paint to record the experiences (often humorous), people, animals and events that give meaning to my life. With the paint, I try to get at feelings and emotions that are just below the surface of a person or to capture the essence of an animal or a passionate idea. I sometimes use humor in my paintings. I’ve heard it said, “Humor is truth, only faster.” I feel that humor in my art helps me to make controversial statements that would be difficult for me to make in any other way.

     I paint mainly with acrylic on canvas. I like lots of color. In addition to living in the Northwest, I travel a lot in both the Southwest and Mexico. My palette combines these three influences.

     I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember. I see things in a different way from the people around me. I am working on ideas in my mind almost all of the time…even in my sleep. I dream painting. I want my paintings to affect the people that see them in a personal way.

Jerry Fenter