About Jen
I paint abstract portraits through listening.
Not just to words, but to tone, rhythm, emotion, and presence — the light people carry that often goes unseen.
I believe stories deserve more than likeness. They deserve care, curiosity, and a form that can hold complexity.
How This Work Began
In 2013, I was gifted an easel. What started as casual painting quickly became a way to process emotion, sound, and connection. I experience a form of synesthesia — emotion and sound often register as color for me — and painting became a way to translate what I was sensing but couldn’t always name.
Over time, I noticed something unexpected: when I painted while listening to people talk about their lives, the work deepened. The paintings felt truer. People felt seen.
That curiosity led me out of the studio and into public spaces, where I began painting abstract portraits while interviewing strangers, friends, and community members.
Listening as Practice
Listening is not passive in my work. It’s an act of care.
I listen for:
• how someone speaks, not just what they say
• where energy softens or intensifies
• what’s held between words
Abstract portraiture allows that information to exist without forcing it into a single expression or moment. It makes room for contradiction, movement, and layers — the way people actually are.
This is why I work abstractly, and why revisions are minimal. The paintings are not designed to be perfected; they’re designed to be honest.
Public Work & PBS
This approach became the foundation for How to Happy: a traveling art show, where I paint people while interviewing them about joy, resilience, and humanity. The project eventually grew into High Light, Human Light, a PBS digital series that brings these conversations and portraits to a wider audience.
Selected highlights:
• Creator & host of High Light, Human Light (PBS Digital)
• Creator & host of How to Happy: a traveling art show
• NEXUS Award recipient (2024)
• Live painting & storytelling events across Texas and beyond
Public work allows me to explore how listening and color can foster empathy at scale. Private commissions allow that same care to be focused inward — on one person, one relationship, one family.
The scale changes. The integrity doesn’t.
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Private Commissions
In a private commission, the experience becomes quieter and more intimate. Each portrait begins with a recorded conversation and unfolds over time, guided by what I hear and sense.
People commission portraits to mark transitions, honor relationships, celebrate family, or simply to be seen without performance. Some discover my work through PBS or live events; others arrive having never seen the public work at all.
Both paths are welcome.
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What keeps me engaged in this work is curiosity — about people, about connection, about how color can hold what words sometimes can’t.
If you’re here because something resonated, you’re in the right place.
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