Jenny Scobel

Jenny Scobel



Jenny Scobel (born 1955) is an American painter who lives and works in New York. She makes paintings of women and children weaving a sense of innocence with foreboding or darkness. Her works, compared to Romaine Brooks, have been auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's.




Jenny Scobel was born in Orrville, Ohio. At Cleveland Institute of Art, Scobel received her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute.

She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

Scobel makes portraits or figurative paintings of children and women that blend a scene of innocent-like faces with images that suggest an underlying dark or disturbing story. The subtle mixed messages creates a "disarming perspective" and "present a mature approach to creating complex and disarming works. Family tree of a young girl in the foreground, hands in her pockets and a disturbing background of a tree and running blood is one example. She often works in wax and graphite.Journalist Kristin Capp likened her work to that of Romaine Brooks.

Raphael Rubinstein of Art In America said "Scobel is an artist whose attention to detail reaches manic (and sublime) proportions. She poses her subjects - in this show, pensive young women - against wallpaper per whose intricate motifs would exhaust a less patient artist. These backgrounds often seem to reveal the subjects' thoughts, as if the women had dreamed the allegorical scenes into existence."

She gives lectures, such as the April 7, 2010 engagement at the School of Art at Illinois State.