jenny nelson attended maine college of art in portland, maine, and graduated with a bfa from bard college where she received a scholarship to the lacoste school of the arts in france.  she has been living and working in woodstock, new york for 18 years.  her early artistic training was focused on the classical and representational but it has always been her natural instinct to depict the surroundings in abstract forms.  most of the paintings evolve as an intuitive reaction to her surroundings, be it interior space, inner space, or landscape.  to evoke this kind of sensory memory in her work jenny applies many layers of paint, using gesture and an internal sense of color.  traces of previous layers will remain visible, allowing colors to interact in ways they could not have anticipated.  her compositions develop through a series of decisions that are both conscious and unconscious.  with great sensitivity to these evolving colors and forms, a very personal abstract language emerges.  she tends to focus on particular shapes or compositions for long periods of time resulting in a series of closely related paintings.  the paintings are an ongoing process of addition and subtraction until everything on the canvas co-exists with a depth and intensity that seems balanced.