Bill Jensen

Bill Jensen began his painting career in the 1970s, responding to impulses of Modernism and photographic realism. His visceral abstractions are notoriously saturated with unconventional compositions, heavily worked surfaces, and an explosive color palette. The works often emerge after a slow, laborious process laden with the artist’s spontaneous emotional connection to each canvas. His works are rarely done serially and are inspired by sources including Chinese poetry, Buddhism, film, and the natural world. Jensen seeks to highlight the material properties of paint while activating the psyche of his viewer. Each abstraction is harmonious yet unpredictable, avoiding the semantics of ego for the whimsical terrain of memory and intuitive perception.

Jensen has exhibited at institutions including The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., Museum of Modern Art, New York, American Academy of Art and Letters, New York, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Orlando Museum of Art, Florida, Apex Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, among many other international galleries and project spaces.