Paul Jenkins (born 1923)

He became a student at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1937 to 1942, when he was ages 14 to 18. His interest in and talent for theater earned him a fellowship to the Cleveland Playhouse, and then he went to the Drama School of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. But determining to be an artist, he went to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League from 1948 to 1952 and was influenced the most by instructors Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Morris Kantor.

In 1953, he went to Paris where he has lived for long periods of time alternating with New York City. He first studied at the American Artists Center where he began his experiments with pouring paint on canvas in various thicknesses to create a sense of dynamism in the process itself. For him, each work became a spiritual journey of discovery, and his exposure of white canvas combined with color saturations gave a sense of illumination about his work.

A 1966 film, "The Ivory Knife: Paul Jenkins at Work," focused on his life and his working techniques.

He became a lithographer, and many of these works as well as his early paintings reflected his interest in mysticism including Zen Buddhism and the writings of Carl Jung. He perceived his work as god inspired, and many of his canvases were grounds for manipulations of paint. In 1963, influenced by Wolfgang Wols and Mark Tobey, he began to layer pigment by pouring it in various thicknesses and designs. Fluidity and flow of paint inspired by mood characterized these paintings suggesting that the earth and its inhabitants are in a constant state of change