“No grass grows under my feet, I’m always on the move.”

Jean Grunewald says her earliest ventures in art began with nothing more than a pencil. “We didn’t have many toys but my dad was a writer and artist so we had a lot of pencils.” Now an accomplished artist, she says painting and drawing come naturally because they were introduced at a young age.

While Jean’s subject matter is wide and varied, from equestrian scenes, to African safaris, and figure studies, her paintings expertly focus on lost line. “I love jigsaw puzzles – I look for interesting shapes or lost line in my subject matter.” To focus on this design aspect, she starts with lines and shapes, uses a limited palette, and only adds color at the very end of the process. “My goal is to express a feeling – you can’t capture that in one photo.”

For Jean, growth and originality are her artistic goals for 2021, which began while reflecting on her college artworks. “It’s more abstract work from the 70s, so I want to rework them. I want to work on being more abstract but with hints of realism.” This reprise in abstraction is part of her goal to bring more originality and branch out to new genres. “I’m interested in bigger paintings with multi-figures. After college I taught myself to paint classically, so now I’m going back.” This is stirred by her belief that “if you make something too realistic it almost leaves no room for interpretation and loses interest.”

When it comes to her art and life Jean believes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She pursues life with a go-getter mentality, even through a gut-wrenching horse-related accident when she needed reconstructive surgery. “It was a big accident, and the weirdest feeling because I was the same person on the inside but I looked different.” Taking everything in stride, Jean jumped back in the saddle and continued moving her art forward – progressing with even more momentum than before.

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