Citizens Artist Collective

Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1953, Jenny Wall received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Illustration and Printmaking. As a professional printmaker in Boston, she was a member of Experimental Etching Studio and exhibited work consisting mostly of abstract monotypes and color lithographs.

During this period, Jenny became extremely interested in the urban landscape which resulted in continuing her education through Radcliffe College in Landscape Design. Her thesis project was ‘Spirituality and Symbolism in the Landscape’, and in 1993 she received the award for excellence in Landscape Design from the college at the 25th anniversary of the program.

Jenny has always straddled the line between design and fine art, maintaining studios everywhere she went and supplementing the design work with her own personal vision translated into fine art. Moving to Arizona, first Bisbee, then Tucson, inspired her to begin painting using personal interior dialogue as an inspiration rather than the comfortable landscape elements that were her major focus while in New England and California. This has led to pieces which treat oil paint transparently much like the printmaking process, layered rather than heavily applied, and an increase in the size of the pieces.

The desert has been a powerful cause for self-exploration; the intemperate climate cut the connection to the known landscape features and created a need to focus inward, as well as feeling the need to open spatially. It’s been an interesting push/pull resulting in a kind of freedom which would be hard to experience anywhere else.