jennyarntzen.art

  Acrylic ink and brush, glass pen, pen and ink on paper 9" x 6" Last evening my neighbour, and friend, Louise, came over for a drawing session. For many years we have passed each other on the street, this was our first time sitting down together to draw. I laid out a selection of papers, brushes, graphite, glass pens, ink pens, and acrylic inks on the dining room table. We used a collection of glass shot glasses for mixing ink washes and tones.  We started at 7 pm and finally wrapped up at 10 pm.  I was surprised by the drawing I made. It is a combination of techniques I have been exploring since I first started drawing in my late teens. A descriptive, dynamic contour line giving a sense of the edge of form, giving definition for a form to emerge. Symbolic markings of triangles, circles and short lines. Organic tracings of splash marks, their reach extending into exploratory threads. Tonal washes that give substance to shapes and definition between the emergence of shape...

  Two pears - 2025 01 20 - graphite, acrylic ink, pen on cardstock - 4" x 6" All my life I have laboured under the false construct that if I was going to do creative work I needed to be extraordinary, I needed to break new ground, I needed to make something that had never been made before. These ideas served as a self-censuring internal monologue that put a seemingly unmovable obstacle between me and my creative expression. I hope my experience and strength can give all us creatives confidence that our work is worth doing and it doesn't have to be anything other than what it is, that it exists because we made it. Another false construct that has hindered my progress is the idea that I have to put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort into practicing my creative work before it is worth sharing. But that is also not true. As soon as I make something I feel is worth sharing, it is worth sharing. If it gives me comfort, articulates an experience, broadens my perspecti...

  Pen and ink on paper - 8 1/2" x 11" 1986 Treeplanting camp. We lived in tents, we played volleyball. We brought our kids and they were looked after during the day so we could go out in the fields to plant trees. We were nomadic, moving from camp to camp throughout the planting season. When the work was done in the summer, we would find a house to rent and live on unemployment insurance through the winter. Others of us lived in rural or wilderness farmsteads and we would head back to harvest our gardens, build onto our shanty farm houses, and work the land.