Paul Jenkins (1923-2012), an American abstract artist and member of the New York School, was born in Kansas City. He worked at a ceramics factory in his youth, an experience that heavily influenced his tactile methods of painting.
Jenkins’s practice was characterised by his choice to avoid the paintbrush altogether, instead allowing pigment to pool, bloom, or roll across the surface of his canvases, guiding the paint with a knife to create fluid fields of colour. “I try to paint like a crapshooter throwing dice, utilising past experience and my knowledge of the odds. It’s a big gamble, and that’s why I love it,” the artist once said.