Paul Jenkins was born in 1923 in Kansas City, Mo. His range of influences included a childhood apprenticeship in a ceramics factory, early experiences in theatre, the church architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as Eastern art & philosophy.
Like Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock, Jenkins did not use brushes in the traditional way. Overlapping veils of color were washed with great precision onto unstretched canvases. Blade-like devices were then used to regulate the flow of paint as the canvas was tilted first in one direction then another. Beginning in 1958, Jenkins titled each canvas Phenomena, with additional identifying words. He believed the work to be descriptive of the discovery process inherent in each painting.
When I see nature directly, it looks at me. I cannot begin to see it. I have to approach indirectly through the meshes and foliage of darker memory. The painting experience becomes visualized in the act of painting. But this in no way means that I have nothing in my 'mind' when I start a painting. Nor does it mean I have visions. The very size of the canvas dictates to me. A white canvas does not frighten me, the grain of the canvas gives me a clue, the time of the year gets into the act, everything involving nature is there, and it is a veritable Pandora's Box. Sometimes it is like keeping a storm door shut with one hand and painting with the other. Keeping the known out so the unknown may enter.
-Paul Jenkins