"Your Dream Space is Only an Artist Away"
Winter 2025 New workshop coming soon
"Learn how to make your own Hand Painted Wallpaper and Floorcloths"

As a multi-style decorative artist I am always trying new techniques and media. I choose to express peace and beauty in most of my work and hope my enthusiasm is transferred to the viewer. I see the world through rose-colored glasses and have a deep love and concern for our planet’s environmental future.

Professionally I divide my time as a fine artist and teacher. I work on site-specific artwork with interior designers and architects. Some of the things I design and build are mobiles, custom room dividers, screens, murals on canvas, floor-cloths, and Lazy Susan's.

Encaustic lessons, workshops, and demos in my studio.
Learn more about the history of this unique, challenging, alchemy guided, luminous, addictive, and wondrous medium of Encaustics. Where unexpected art accidents are beautiful!

Bio and Statement
Chicagoan Jenny Learner has been making art her entire life. Classically trained at the American Academy of Art and self-taught in interior, surface design & photography. For over 40 years this multi-faceted artist has been designing custom room dividers, screens, hand-painted wall coverings, fabrics, murals, site-specific art for Interior Designers and Architects. She exhibits, teaches, curates, juries locally and nationally. A published featured artist in Encaustic Art in the Twenty-First Century by Anne Lee & E. Ashley Rooney, "Dining Among the Stars" by Michael Curry, several Chicago magazines and newspapers. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Encaustic Art Institute in Santa Fe New Mexico and in many private collections worldwide.

After an introduction to encaustic she fell in love with the ancient medium of fusing fire with beeswax and pure pigment. Encaustic became her elixir of life. Imagine painting and sculpting within the wonderful realm of flowers and honey. The medium’s luminosity, transparency, aromatherapy, alchemy, with the unexpected results constantly surprise her.

She gains inspiration for her work from earth’s multiple landscapes and wonders including raw gemstones, outer space, medicine, life, & dreams. Further curious and fascinated with evolution, anthropology and time, as an artist Jenny is grateful to be living in this digital age with resources at her fingertips. The photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and the Hubble telescope’s imagery of the Universe endlessly muse her.

My personal journey
My work is an exploration of peace, beauty, and the delicate balance of our environment. Growing up during the civil rights movement with activist parents and an artist mother, I learned early on that art has the power to transform, to heal, and to advocate for a better world. These values remain at the core of my creative practice.
I work across multiple media, but I am particularly drawn to encaustic, sculpting paper with beeswax into ethereal mobiles that seem to breathe with the air. The layering, translucency, and organic movement of these works mirror the fragile, interconnected systems of nature. Each piece is a meditation—on memory, on impermanence, on the resilience of both the human spirit and the natural world.
My artistic journey began in childhood, nurtured by Saturdays spent in art classes at the Art Institute, as well as ballet and voice lessons. This foundation instilled in me a deep appreciation for movement, harmony, and expression, all of which continue to influence my work today. Living in my studio, surrounded by my materials, I create in conversation with my surroundings, allowing intuition and process to guide me.
Through my art, I invite viewers into a space of stillness and contemplation, encouraging them to see the world with renewed wonder and awareness. It is my hope that these works serve as quiet yet powerful reminders of our responsibility to cherish and protect the beauty that surrounds us.