kj@kennyjensen.com

Statement

As a Florida native who spent much of my childhood outdoors both in the city and the country, I have always had an essential connection to our unique natural environment. This relationship has steadily deepened over the years through my evolving art practice, and related ecological research. Becoming a parent has also raised the stakes and heightened my ecological awareness and concern. As a result there is a tension present in my work - An earnest desire to share the wonder and mystery I encounter in common, overlooked nature while also expressing grief over what is being lost.

After years of attempting to embrace the entire cosmos at once through a wide variety of multidisciplinary explorations I recently chose to focus my creative energies to grow a self-sustainable oil painting practice. Painting has become a means for me to synthesize my widely varied interests and concerns into a more manageable form.

In my newest series “Lost Focus (I didn’t forget you)”, common, yet personally significant Florida forest views are rendered ecstatic and true to life, yet remain inscrutable and out of reach. This process provides me with an outlet to lament limited access to wildness/wilderness in my current circumstances while I also contemplate the ever widening rift between our daily urban/virtual lives and nature. Not only is the natural/physical world becoming less visible to our increasingly distracted, solipsistic lenses, it is actually disappearing around us as we focus our attention and resources on other things. This erasure of nature and escalation of new development has exponetially exploded in the past few years in Tampa Bay which is currently one of the fastest growing areas in the US.

My painting practice is informed and inhabited by 20 years of past and ongoing nature focused explorations in photography, video, sculpture, and the collection and presentation of found-objects. I am also deeply influenced by the following: BOOKS (esp. speculative fiction (Jeff Vandermeer), ecological writings (Wendell Berry), theoretical physics (Carlo Rovelli) and contemplative philosophy (Richard Rohr)), CINEMA (esp. Andrei Tarkovsky and Akira Kurosawa) and certain SURREALISTS painters (esp. Yves Tanguy & Max Ernst).

Bio

I am a multidisciplinary professional artist and amateur naturalist currently focused on growing an oil painting practice which can sustain my goal to live life in the woods. My wide ranging creative practices flow out of a lifelong connection to the natural environment and insatiable curiosity fueled by divergent tendencies...

I have been active in the Tampa Bay Area arts community for over 20 years as an exhibiting artist, grass roots organizer, curator, art handler and museum preparator for many of the area museums, galleries, and schools - including the Morean Arts Center, The Studio @620, The Museum of Fine Arts, University of Tampa, and more.

I have had several well received solo and two person exhibitions and have participated in dozens of group exhibitions both locally and out of state, including multiple curated, climate crisis focused exhibitions that featured regional and national artists. I have received multiple artist grants and have completed multiple public art and private commissions. I have also been invited to give dozens of local and virtual lectures, and have been the subject of multiple interviews and publications.

I currently live in St. Petersburg, FL with my wife Maggie (who is a farmer and lifelong nurturer of plants and animals), and young son Cedar with our old shepherd, bunny, and 6 hens. In a few years we are moving to our family land “The Floating Woods” in rural Gulf Hammock, FL, to grow a farm and artist residency focused on forest bathing and environmental stewardship.

To keep up to date with my studio practice and developments at The Floating Woods, please follow @kennyjensenartist on Instagram