Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1945, Bill Jensen has lived and worked in New York since the early 1970s, and was one of the first artists to establish a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He came into prominence with “the return to painting” of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Intuitive and visceral, Jensen’s abstractions have long been admired for their unconventional compositions and profound sense of color. Saturated, densely worked surfaces, seemingly primordial in origin, transcend any sense of the struggle that Jensen attributes to his painting process. For Jensen, a painting is successful only when the artist’s initial impulse and his material’s properties harmoniously converge; this can sometimes take several years to achieve. Defined by an amorphous, ever-changing search for resolution, Jensen’s results are ultimately determined by the act of painting itself.
