Jean Gumpper: Biography

jean_gumpper_bioJean Gumpper was born in Hawaii, grew up in Michigan and now lives in Colorado, with her husband, Stephen Flynn and their son, Andrew. Jean is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the Colorado College. Her prints are in the collections of Colorado College, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; Cranbrook Institute of Arts, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Rocky Mountain National Park; Springfield Art Museum, MO; University of Pittsburgh, PA: University of Wisconsin, Madison; as well as private and corporate collections in the United States, Canada, Japan, Nepal and Sweden. In 2008, she has had exhibitions in Seattle and Denver and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Jean received a Visual Artist Fellowship award from the Colorado Council on the Arts in 2000 and she participated as an artist in residence at the Ucross Foundation in 2001 and at Rocky Mountain National Park in 1998.

 

Artist Statement:

“In my work as an artist and printmaker, I respond to landscape as a metaphor for emotions and experiences. Being alone in nature helps me listen to my intuition and have the patience necessary to really see. I seek to integrate the memories, sounds and feelings of being in the landscape into the print. The carving of the woodblock and the layering of the ink, for me, echo natural processes such as the layering of leaves, water, trees and light. Each color is mixed carefully and applied in a series of transparent and opaque overlapping layers through a reduction woodcut process. Gradually, the layers build up into a completed image. Creating the print enables me to relive my experience and to share it with others.”