Still Life
In her STILL LIFE work, Mimi Jensen presents an often playful mix of everyday objects. She selects her subjects from a variety of sources — her collection of thrift-store finds, the ripe, colorful fruits found at farmers markets, almost any happened-upon object that intrigues her. With a photographer's eye for composition, she arranges and re-arranges these objects until the rhythm feels right. With great attention to detail, she paints these objects life-size from an orthographic perspective. By spotlighting her subjects "on stage" she asks the viewer to notice them as much as she does, to look at their texture and color and shape, and how they interplay. The allure of the still life revived in 2003, inspired by a workshop with the artist John Morra, and it continues to be her joy and her challenge. More recently, she fulfilled a dream of spending an entire week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This resulted in an on-going series of paintings, "A Week at the Met," exhibited for the first time in 2010.

Interiors
In her INTERIORS, Mimi Jensen paints edges, shadows, and glimpses that suggest only a hint of what's beyond. Often sparked by something observed, such as an intricate play of light and shadow on a wall, Jensen takes that inspiration and builds an imagined environment around it. Although her settings evidence a human presence, no one is there at the captured moment. Jensen paints what she wants you to see. But she also urges the viewer to pause and consider what has not been emphasized or has been left out. Jensen wants the viewer to wonder what's around that corner.

Horizons
Chance and imagination dominate Mimi Jensen's HORIZONS work. This imagined realism adds an unexpected sensuousness and compelling beauty to familiar objects. The truths in her paintings draw from any number of sources — relationships, voyages, balance. Both intrusion and a touch of romance might also find their way onto the canvas. Her richly realized spaces might welcome pears or chairs, bridges or balls. One scene embellishes reality, another interprets the public domain through an abandoned arrangement of chairs. Whatever her theme, Jensen's careful use of scale and color seduces the viewer into entering unknown terrain.