Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Entrance Portal, 1973.

Paul Jenkins’ series of works, Chapel of Meditation, was originally displayed in the early 1970’s at the thirteenth century Cistercian Silvacane Abbey in Provence, France. Writing about an August 2016 exhibit of the works, at the University of Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery, Jonathan Goodman comments that The Chapel of Meditation paintings’ “tenacious pursuit of the artist’s vision should be read as a challenge to us all: to see with more than our actual eyes.”

“colors are born not in, but from, light. And light is the precondition for life.”—Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Himalayan, 1971.

“[Jenkins] treats colors as if they were the heralds of life.”—John Berger

Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Chapel Shell Sound, 1972.

Biography
Paul Jenkins (1923 – 2012) was an American abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Kansas City and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute before enlisting in the Naval Air Corps during World War II. After the war he moved to New York, where he studied at the Art Students League. Jenkins’s paintings are concerned with the application of color. A pioneer in the use of acrylic paint in the 1960’s, he perfected the process of pouring paint to achieve the luminous fields of color that characterize his paintings.