“The language of birds is very ancient, and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood…” -Gilbert White

Jhenna Quinn Lewis’s paintings are nothing short of delicate beauty and quiet mystery. Working in a bedroom-turned studio with a large window allowing for scrub jays to visit, Lewis surrounds herself with items that inspire her work from antique Japanese and Chinese bowls, to white lanterns, glass bottles, and books, many which will appear in her paintings. She also collects items from her daily walks in the hills: branches, leaves, feathers, bird’s nests, and stones. In the spirit of those daily walks, Lewis’s paintings invite viewers to slow down, be patient, look, and walk away with a sense of peace. To do this, she focuses on simple subject matter allowing everything else around it to soften and fall away.

“I include only what I feel is necessary to impart a meditative thought or feeling,” she says.

In fact, from Lewis’s earliest memories, she has always had an inherent fascination to express what she sees and to translate it, capturing a wondrous glimpse of a moment held in time. Drawing inspiration from Japanese masters such as Utagawa Hiroshige, Uta Maro, and Hasegawa Tõhaku, Lewis practices the tenets of wabi sabi, the adherence to beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, and the austere. She also blends a reverence for nature with the poignant beauty of imperfection and impermanence along with the enchanting and whimsical quality of fairytales and a sense of mystery.