Jenny Whalley, mixed-media artist and art society demonstrator
I’m a vibrant artist with a passion for colour. I paint quickly and loosely: red buses, zebras, jazz bands and boats and sea scenes. My art is all about movement and story-telling.
Mall Galleries, London Exhibitor
Invited to exhibit twice by the Society of Women Artists
President
Crowthorne and Sandhurst Art Society
Patchings Art Festival Winner
First place, for mixed media of my black cat on a stool
Demonstrator
Since 2002 at art societies in the UK and abroad.
For Art Societies
Demonstrations, workshops, critiques and judging
I'm not your traditional watercolourist! I paint quickly, standing up at the easel, telling stories as I go. I encourage audience interaction, which influences how the final painting turns out. I've demonstrated for art societies in England, and abroad.
“Thank you very much for a fantastic demonstration. Everyone really enjoyed it.”
“Your work is really so different and beautifully loose. You are so very inspiring.”
Demonstration
Two hours, evening or afternoon. £200, travel included. Also on Zoom.
Judging
Your exhibition or competition. By arrangement.
Critique
Everyone brings one painting. An evening, £200.
Workshop
Members paint along with me. £400 full day, £350 half day.
I travel up to about two hours' drive from Sandhurst. I bring everything, easel included. Your society is invoiced afterwards, no deposit.
Email me a few dates that suit your society and I'll come back to you within two days.
For people who love paintings
My paintings
St Paul’s: Eating Out
£450
Watercolour, mixed media
Originals are £250 to £450, mounted and unframed so they post safely. You buy through the website's secure checkout.
Do have a look, and if one catches your eye, it can be yours.
London is what I'm best known for. I fell for it the day I arrived in 2001: the red buses, the black cabs, and a skyline full of colourful cranes. I invent little people as I paint, someone reading a newspaper, someone walking a dog. When I'm painting, I'm putting my story on the paper.
Blackfriars Bridge
£450
Watercolour, Mixed Media
I paint to order too: your family, your dog, or your own corner of London, from your photographs. Commissions start at £600.
My story, in short
Shoe polish, really?
In Zimbabwe I ran the art department at Arundel School in Harare. There was no art paper to be had, so villagers made it for us from old industrial overalls. It wouldn't take watercolour, so we drew on it in oil pastel and fixed it with shoe polish. I brought some of that paper with me, and I still draw my jazz bands on it.
Once I was demonstrating a jazz band to an art society, telling everyone how unusual shoe polish was. An elderly gentleman told us he'd served at the end of the Second World War, and had drawn his maps in shoe polish because he had nothing else with him. So I wasn't so unusual after all.
What inspires an artist? Is there a meaning behind the paintings I create? Well, it is wonderful that someone else may see something in the painting that was not anticipated when it was painted!
Read More
TELLING MY STORIES IN WATERCOLOUR MIXED MEDIA
Read about the inspiration behind the use of this medium. I love demonstrating this technique. How many artists do you know who draw with shoe polish on handmade banana leaf paper?
RAG PAPER, OIL PASTELS & JAZZ
