Neil Jenney

Place: Torrington

Born: 1945

Biography:

Neil Jenney is an American painter and sculptor born on November 6, 1945, in Torrington, Connecticut, and working in New York City. He attended Massachusetts College of Art from 1964 to 1966. In 1966 he moved to New York City, where he continues to reside. He initially worked as a taxicab driver, and scrounged some of his art materials from dumpsters. His early artwork focused on interior environmental sculpture, but he found that his paintings were more successful in generating sufficient income. He is interested in both the symbolic and physical framing of his artworks. His paintings often feature a stark dark-colored frame, with a stenciled title of the work. In 1978, his painting style was described by art critic Marcia Tucker as 'Bad Painting', a description which he has embraced. Jenney describes his style as 'realism', but it is an idiosyncratic use of the word on his part, meaning 'a style in which narrative truths are found in the simple relationships of objects'.