“I try to paint like a crapshooter throwing dice, utilizing past experience and my knowledge of the odds. It’s a big gamble, and that’s why I love it.” (1964)
Paul Jenkins, born in Kansas City, MO
(July 12, 1923 – June 9, 2012)
Frequent visits to the renowned Asian collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art where he is strongly affected by the monumental Chinese fresco of Buddha, the polychrome sculptures of the Bodhisattva, Kuan-Yin (11-12th century), Indian bronzes, especially Shiva, and statues of lohans in meditation. In writing about this early time in his life, the artist states:
“These Eastern attitudes fostered in me a sense of mystery about the universe that has drawn me all my life. Eastern art has inspired, nourished and helped me enter a state of mind where dualism seemed normal. Knowing that you are two instead of one allows you to see and perceive more than one thing at the same time.”
https://www.pauljenkins.net/bio/chro.html
As a boy, Paul Jenkins met both Thomas Hart Benton and Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright suggested that he should think about a career in agriculture rather than art.
Influenced by the theories of Jung and by the visionary imagery of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, Mr. Jenkins described himself as an “abstract phenomenist,” and from the 1960s on, all his paintings’ titles began with the word “Phenomena.”
“I have conversations with them,” he said of his paintings, “and they tell me what they want to be called.”
excerpted from New York Times obit
1963
Phenomena Hokusai Fall”, 1974
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