Jenna von Benedikt, “Cosmos,” 48×60 in.

For years, Jenna von Benedikt painted wherever she could find room—on the kitchen counter, at the table, between preparing lunch and dinner as four young children raced through the house at the speed of light. She carved out creative time in fragments. “Was it an hour? Was it 20 minutes?” von Benedikt recalls of those early makeshift studios. “I knew I wanted to do art, but I also knew I wanted to have a family and I felt like the two blended really well. Sometimes people do creative stuff when they have young kids, sometimes it doesn’t happen. But I felt like I always needed to pursue it.”

Raised outside of London, von Benedikt moved with her family to the States when she was 16, landing in Utah where they had good friends from their LDS Church community. She graduated with a BFA from Brigham Young University. She studied abroad in Italy, which left a mark on her practice, from painting en plein air every day to learning printmaking techniques with layering and colors. “The whole artistic atmosphere and the fact that we were seeing so much, both modern and ancient, you really started to see how color and textures and all these beautiful techniques blended together and you could put modern elements in with something very old,” she says. “Art wasn’t a separate element, it was a part of daily life. I don’t think I had ever been so overdosed on museums.”

In Los Angeles, where she and her husband moved after she graduated, she continued to dose herself with museums. “I didn’t have a ton of room to create, so I would constantly go to the Getty Museum and art shows to tap into that connection with the art world,” von Benedikt says.

But it wasn’t until the family moved to Peoria, Illinois that the idea of pursuing art as a full-time career began to take shape. After entering an art guild show there—and doing well—von Benedikt felt newly energized to return to painting. “That was really a spark for me to start creating again,” she says. By that point she had three children under the age of ten, and had to make art wherever she could.

When the family moved back to the West to be closer to family and the outdoors, they settled up a canyon in Idaho. They built a specific space off the garage for her studio. “Because I have this separate space now, it’s much easier to make things. To just let things be. I paint while my kids are gone at school. I have a lot more time during the day now to focus on longer painting periods. But my time is with my kids when they come home.”

Von Benedikt paints on panels rather than canvas. Lying flat rather than upright, the panels give her a level of control she prefers to working on canvas at an easel. “I can move paint around with different tools to get different texturing and things appearing that I didn’t necessarily do,” von Benedikt says. “I love planks of wood. I love scrapers. I love big, industrial painting tools or metal rollers.”

“Rembrandt’s work was always about texture to me, not just coloring,” she says of one of her inspirations. “The texturing and the glazing, there’s something magical for me in that. It is very ethereal. Mystical. So although my work is typically very flat, even though I use lots of layers, there’s something about bringing something underneath that shows the magic of paint itself.”

It’s what the tools bring to the fore, what the blending of paints and the layering and texturing reveals in her play on panel that directs her next stroke. Using multiple layers in her backgrounds and organic abstraction, von Benedikt harnesses the spontaneity to create atmospheres to place her subjects amongst.

“The abstract side of my paintings where the fun is for me because there’s color, there’s textures, you get to wipe away some things, you get to keep some other things that you think are really neat. It’s a game of hide-and-seek, pulling and taking away and covering up. That’s really the fun bit for me is creating these atmospheres but then I put a subject in or an ornament. And the backgrounds determine that.”

For going on a decade now, with hundreds of paintings in the series, von Benedikt established her #SaintedSeries, using her faith as a guide and her reflections of those teachings to inspire her subject matter. “I believe there’s something higher, something holier in what I’m painting. Something spiritual and very faith-based about why I wanted to start creating this work,” she says. “It’s a way to honor and praise different parts of creation.”

Jenna von Benedikt, “Find Me the Garden,” oil, 12×12 in.

Drawing on an interpretation of her name as meaning “little bird,” von Benedikt began the #SaintedBirds series. The hummingbirds function as a mechanism of self-reflection and portraiture that viewers can resonate with too. “It was a way to ask myself what kind of saint am I? What am I doing to be a good influence or to reflect something beautiful in the world,” she says. “The hummingbird’s spiritual connections and moments of magic in the outdoors make them feel like we’re really part of something amazing here. We should be doing good things, but it doesn’t have to be big. These little pollinators do the most amazing work for creation.”

Regardless of one’s own faith background, the #SaintedBirds have struck a chord with many viewers, offering a visual solace to heartache and grief of lost loved ones. “I cannot tell you how many stories I hear saying, Oh, my mother, my grandmother, my son—whoever it was—that passed away, I saw a hummingbird and I felt like it was them and your painting reminds me that they’re still with me,” she says. “Unless you believe that kind of thing, it sounds a little quirky, but to people who believe there is a connection with nature and the spirit and another life, these paintings touch people, and I don’t know that when I’m making them.”

Yet, von Benedikt can recognize that not everyone resonates with the soft, gentle nature of hummingbirds. Someone like her husband, a rugged outdoor writer, resonates more with the big game of the West, further inspiring her adjunct series, #SaintedBeasts. Creatures like bison and foxes and horses become the modes of honoring. “They’re so iconic to America, especially the bison and the history behind them, so my paintings are a way to turn them into something more sacred and precious to the history and the culture of the US,” she says. “The entire #SaintedSeries was there to honour the creator and this amazing world that we live in because no matter where we go, no matter where we’ve been, we’ve found it’s been amazing.”

Jenna von Benedikt, “Luminous Stride,” 36×36 in.

Jenna has elaborated on the literal and symbolic nature of light and dark, whether naturally occurring in day and night or the lightness and darkness that ebbs and flows through our inner peace. The colors she uses and the atmospheres she creates emanate a sanctuary, a peace, a quiet that feels indelible to the natural world. “I believe that places you go and the colors you see and what you’re surrounded with absolutely influences the mood you portray,” she says. “I think there’s just as much good about the abstract, raw side of nature and the dark colors, as well as the bright and bubbly side, that I get to paint in that too.”

The “JvB Classic,” as she calls her signature style, has evolved over time but remains rooted in her favorite combinations of metallics, light blues and creams alongside dark teal blues and whites that evoke a sense of light and darkness. What once relied on a brighter palette has shifted toward more muted, earth-toned colors that she now hand-mixes, while her backgrounds have grown more organic than their earlier geometric foundations. Beyond these stylistic shifts, von Benedikt has begun blending elements of the #Birds and #Beasts series and exploring the possibility of incorporating human figures into the work. “Combining the different series makes it a bit more of a playful interaction,” she says. “The creation story evolves into people in the end. So I think it’s a natural direction to go. I don’t think I’ll ever be a true landscape artist nor a true figurative artist. I enjoy the experimentation and the abstract.”

Now there’s rarely a day when von Benedikt is not in the studio, planning, experimenting, or painting. “Whereas before I worked on maybe one or two paintings here and there and took long breaks without worrying about it,” she says. “Now I’m at the point where if I’m not painting, it almost feels wrong.”

The newest works in the #SaintedSeries—alongside earlier pieces—are currently on view at Meyer Gallery in Park City. Von Benedikt is also represented at galleries across the West, including Santa Fe, Scottsdale, Edmonds, Washington, and Jackson Hole.

For von Benedikt, though, the act of making the work remains its own reward. “The pure creating part to me doesn’t feel like work,” she says. “It’s exciting, it’s fun. And I think if you go into it feeling that rather than, I have to do this, it reflects in the work.”

“The whole series is about the blessing of the world,” she adds. “And that’s exactly what this whole painting business is about: to bring you joy and light and make you feel good.”

Jenna von Benedikt, Meyer Gallery, Park City, Mar. 14 – 28. Reception: Saturday, March 14th, 6-8 pm.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.