Born Worcester 1943, the second daughter of artists Raymond Cowern RA and Margaret (nee Trotman). Her elder sister Anna was born in 1940; her younger brother Nicholas will be born in 1953. Jenny studies at Brighton College of Art, where her father is Dean of the Art faculty. During this time, she produces Mother Cutting the Hedge, 1962 and East Street, Brighton, 1963.
Moving to the Royal College of Art, Jenny comes under the influence of Peter Blake, who is on staff, and of Carel Weight. At a tube station, she meets the artist Raymond Higgs, who will become her life-long partner and produces, work including Dutch Interior Studies and V&A, both from 1964.
Jenny wins a David Murray travelling scholarship to paint landscape, and uses it to come to Cumbria where Raymond’s family live. Raymond’s mother owns a row of cottages at Langrigg, near Wigton, one of which lies empty and it is made available to the couple. Though in a derelict condition with neither water nor electricity, Jenny falls in love with the cottages, and they provide a base for her scholarship.
After graduating from the RCA, Jenny moves with Raymond to Sheffield, where she has been offered a teaching post on the College of Art’s Foundation Course. Receiving news from Raymond’s mother that the cottages at Langrigg are to be demolished, she and Raymond agree that if his mother gives them the cottages, the buildings will provide a home and studios for them both.
Moving to Langrigg, Jenny gets short-term teaching jobs at art colleges in Newcastle and Carlisle, whilst working with Raymond on making the cottages habitable. Doors and Windows, 1970 and Drawing on Walls, 1971/72, produced during this time, show her interest in structure. In the early ‘70s, Jenny had been given a loom. In 1976, works including Media Ideas Matrix and Weaving Felt Knit Matrix set her on the path to exploring textiles as a creative medium. In the same year, Jenny’s parents move to Whitehaven and Jenny discovers she is pregnant with her first child, Tom (bn.1977).
On seeing the felt exhibition at Abbot Hall created by Mary Burkett, and on reading her book The Art of the Feltmaker, Jenny starts producing sky felts. In 1980, Mary Burkett gives Jenny her first solo exhibition at Abbot Hall followed, the same year, by a show at Tullie House. A Crafts Magazine review in 1981 brings Jenny national recognition and numerous exhibitions follow as the artist’s fame grows. In 1982, Raymond & Jenny’s second son, George, is born. In the same year, Jenny’s work is included in the Presences of Nature exhibition at Tullie House and she continues her father’s work repainting fire-damaged murals at the Harris Brush Factory at Stoke Prior. Through this work, she becomes skilled in the use of egg tempera.
The book,
"A Softer Landscape" The Life & Work of Jenny Cowern Valerie M Rickerby Mary E Burkett.
ISBN 0 9528356 7-3
is not available through this website but can be obtained from book shops.
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The International Felt Association is founded in 1984 and Jenny becomes a member. Between 1985 and 1986, felt hangings are sold to the V&A, London and the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead; Tullie House acquires a Sky Felt from Presences of Nature and three gouache studies. In 1986, Jenny contributes to the exhibition New Fibre Art, which travels from London to Poland. Her father dies the same year.
Jenny is commissioned to design and make a mural for Heworth Metro Centre, for which the artist learns the technique of enamelling. Unlike her prize-winning designs for a Stockton car park mural in 1977, these designs are realised. Entitled Things Made, the work pays homage to industries of the area. Another major commission follows for a felt hanging at Hastings Hospital for the mentally ill. Jenny returns to the Harris Brush Factory to repair further damage to her father’s murals, and she and Raymond hold their first joint selling exhibition at their home in Langrigg. In the same year, Jenny begins to combine felt with gesso, worked upon by silverpoint and colour, and usually based on leaf mould.
Jenny is invited to contribute to Art in the Garden, an exhibition at the Oddfellows Gallery, Kendal, for which she produces a series of garden studies, mostly in egg tempera. In the same year, her solo exhibition at Crewe & Alsager College attracts glowing reviews. Solo exhibitions at the Brewery, Kendal and the Beacon Gallery, Whitehaven are held. Jenny also prepares commissions for enamel murals in the A&E department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead and she embarks on a body of work based on the Solway coast, which are shown at Linton Court, Settle. An exhibition of Jenny’s work, Shoreline and Reflections is held at the Sheridan Russell Gallery, London and at Oddfellows, Kendal. She also takes part in a group exhibition in Munich and a visit to Bergen in 2000 for the International Felt Symposium, followed by her participation in a summer school on the island of Bremanger off the coast of Norway, inspires a series of water studies. In 2001, Jenny’s sister Anna dies.
Jenny is commissioned to produce a series of felts for a corridor in Bridlington Hospital in 2003. In 2004, she discovers she is unwell.
In May, a retrospective exhibition of Jenny’s work is held in Stranraer. It is to be her last; in July, the artist dies at the Eden Valley Hospice, Carlisle. She is buried in Bromfield churchyard overlooking the marshes to the Solway, which had given inspiration.
Fiona Venables
Jenny was given a Major Retrospective Exhibition at Tullie House in 2006.
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An obituary, published in local newspapers:
One of Cumbria’s most distinguished artists, Jenny Cowern, has died after a yearlong illness.
The daughter of the artist Raymond Cowern, Jenny trained first at Brighton College of Art where her father was Dean, and then at the Royal College of Art, graduating from the Painting School in 1966. After a brief period as a lecturer at Sheffield College of Art, she moved with her life long partner, the artist Raymond Higgs, to the village of Langrigg in West Cumbria. Together they created the conditions for a life devoted to making art. They converted a row of derelict cottages to provide studios, a wonderfully productive fruit and vegetable garden, and eventually a beautiful home.
Cowern was an acute observer and brilliant renderer of the subtlety of continual change in the natural world. Light and reflection, growth and decay, beaches and tides, clouds and shadows were her favourite subjects. Exquisite drawings and studies formed the basis of works executed in the wide range of media she fearlessly explored and mastered. Alongside the oils and pastels, a series of commissions enabled Cowern to work on a large scale, creating egg tempera murals and employing industrial enamelling techniques, most notably for a 30 meter long mural for Heworth Metro Station, Gateshead.
It was with felt, however that she produced much of her most original and acclaimed work. Gathering wool initially from hedges and fences in the surrounding countryside, Cowern explored and developed dying and felting techniques to create art of astonishing strength and beauty. Dyed fibres of different colours were mixed by carding to produce subtle hues, and overlain to achieve effects similar to washes. Strands of varying thickness were used to create line, the felting process finally compacting and fixing the image. These works took an ancient craft, pushed it in thrilling new directions and gave us contemporary pieces of the highest order.
Cowern’s stature as an artist and her international reputation were confirmed with exhibitions in Hungary, Norway, Poland, Germany, Denmark and France. Her work is in numerous private and public collections.
Jenny Cowern died on 31 July 2005 at the age of 62. She leaves Raymond Higgs and their two sons, Tom a medical doctor and George a physicist.
Duncan Smith a lifelong friend
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