JENNY BERRY

As a kid, if anyone sat still around me, I would start to draw them. I’d tell anyone who’d listen that I wanted to be an artist. When I sold my first drawing for 75 bucks at age ten and won an international competition at 13, there was no turning back.

I received a BFA in figure drawing and graphic design with a minor in art history at Eastern Michigan University in 1987. I worked for 15 years as an advertising art director in New York and Chicago. 

 

I painted in my free time but it wasn’t enough. In 2000, I began freelancing to find more time to paint, and by 2004, I quit advertising to paint full-time. 

 

I’ve had a fascination with traditional painting since I was young. Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Goya, I had a book about the Old Masters when I was a kid that I would make little copies from.

 

de Kooning, Picasso, Basquiat, and Rauschenberg are big influences as well. As are so many other contemporary artists. 

 

But, when it comes to the technique of painting, the brushwork, and the light, it’s Sargent and Sorolla all the way.

 

In addition to my studio practice, I teach classes in my Sarasota FL studio along with my exhibition schedule.