Rhy Jenkins
I barely qualify for an entry as I have in the main worked in schools and subsequently universities on arts (plural) teacher training, and qualitative research into educational and social initiatives. I am, however, trained as an art teacher.
Since retiring I have begun to pursue a life-changing wish list, first to write a novel (Sorted: Spurious Games was out last month) and then to become at approximately half my time a portrait painter and landscape/seascape artist. Watch this space.materials. The exception to this is pantomime where backdrops of canvases painted in 3D are still used.
At the moment I have little to show, although I have attended life classes, sketch a lot and persuaded the Cornwall Chess Association to take me on as their resident cartoonist. Although in my 80’s, now I have the time I regard myself as promising.
I was trained at University college, Cardiff with QTS to teach Art and English but ended up as an academic in the curriculum reform movement (Integrated Humanities) and subsequently as a professional evaluator.
I am most comfortable with some combination of soft pencil, crayon, chalk, wash and indian ink but I am learning oils – see self-portrait attached .
I have a garden in Upper Kelly overlooking the Calstock viaduct and overlooking Devon. It has got my signature on it, hopefully working en plain air. I am under the spell of the Penlee Gallery.
Career highlights: one of my reports was awarded 2011 ‘Evaluation of the Year’ by the American Evaluation Association; played chess for Fiji in the 1994 Moscow Olympiad; Spurious Games published 2020
Best work-related thing recently?
A: Not very recent but taught Polynesian masks with Tevi Tevalu at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
What's your favourite book and/or film?
Richard Burton’s seventeenth century masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy
What irritates you?
I get irritated by incompetent buffoonery masquerading as government, although I prefer to call it righteous anger
Who would you most like to meet (anyone dead or alive)?
Artimisia Gentileschi
Who is your hero/who do you most admire?
I am not a natural disciple (no heroes) but I admire any act that combines selflessness and courage.
What motivates and inspires you?
Inspired? I wish! As human beings we are all culpable underachievers.