Mary Anne Keel Jenkins (1929-2017)
Mary Anne Keel Jenkins (1929-2017) is considered to be one of North Carolina’s most significant female painters. In addition to private collections, her work can be found in the permanent collections of many museums, including: The North Carolina Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Greenville Museum of Art, The North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina State University Gallery of Art and Design, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina A&T University, Wake Forest University and the Goldsboro Art Center, and The Minnesota Museum of Art. A master of abstraction, Mary Anne Keel Jenkins created and explored four distinctive styles over the course of her remarkable career: (chronologically, over 4 decades) the Drip Paintings, Mixed Media on Amatl Paper, Acrylics on Prepared Surfaces, and Alkyd and Collage on Paper.
Mary Anne Keel Jenkins’ Statement on her use of Amatl (also Amati, Amate, or Amatyl) Paper:
“I have been using Amatl paper since my stay in Mexico in 1971. As early as 500 AD the Mayans of Central and South America were making Amatl papers. They used them for illustrated manuscripts and books. Aztecs, who came later, continued to make and use Amatl. Present day manufacturers are Otomi Indians, who, like their ancestors, use these papers for ceremonial purposes.
“The women of the tribes take bark strips of Mulberry, Fig or Hemp that are about an inch wide and boil them in a vat with ash. after ten hours of cooking, the strips are washed, beaten with stone tools, and then placed in the sun to dry.
“Each sheet is irregular in color, size, thickness and texture. Therefore, each presents a challenge as to the choice of other pictorial elements. The crude dry look of Amatl I found to be most attractive. After examining the papers, I decided to use compositional elements that would retain the subtlety of the paper itself.”
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