This article was originally published in the South Seattle Emerald in June 2020. This version has been updated, expanded, and adapted to audio.
When third-generation visual artist George Jennings arrived in the Puget Sound area in 1997, he came with his grandfather's small drafting table and a vision to transform his passion for art into a viable business. He and NaKeesa Frazier-Jennings, his wife and business partner, hoped to continue the Jennings family art legacy that began with George's maternal grandfather.
"Before we moved to Seattle, when we were dating, I got a chance to meet his family. At the time, his grandmother was still alive. She was, I think, in her eighties," NaKeesa said. "Her house was filled with his grandfather's work that I thought was really beautiful. His grandmother would show us interviews of her husband and herself that the local news would do with them from time to time … And I just always felt sad that this Black man who was so talented did not receive the recognition that I felt his work deserved. Though he has some pieces in the Smithsonian and posthumously his work was included in a traveling exhibit of the hundred best self-portraits in America or in history … I just really felt like if George wanted to try to get his work out there that I wanted to help this particular Black man do that and kind of fulfill their family's art destiny and continue that legacy."
George fondly remembered growing up in Washington D.C., visiting the Smithsonian, and learning the craft from his grandfather who also taught George’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. But just like his grandfather, George Jennings didn’t create art from a profit mindset. And although he has sold many pieces of art over the past 20 years, he is still humbly surprised when anyone is willing to pay for his creations.
“I don't want to seem self-deprecating, but it's like, who am I for you to buy my artwork?” said George Jennings. “Especially since when I do my artwork, like my grandfather, it was a labor of love created for himself and his family. So, I wasn't actually trying to create pieces of artwork that I thought I would sell, I mean, you know, to appeal to the general public. It was the items that would appeal to me from the type of art that appealed to me.”
While George continued to create artwork from his heart, he and his wife NaKeesa developed their venture into the business it is today. Even as he took various day jobs and at one point joined the Air Force and the Secret Service, he continued to practice his art. George would create paintings and NaKeesa would get them framed. Eventually, they began to make prints and greeting cards, and sold his artwork at art fairs and a local tea shop where NaKeesa worked. They had very high standards—the quality needed to be top-notch. But in the beginning almost everything was a bootstrapped, DIY affair.
"We would go to Michaels or JOANN Fabric and get the supplies, and we would print out our own cards and glue-stick them together and seal them in the bags. And we made our own prints the same way and put them in mats, and we started selling them that way," George said.
But the Jennings family wasn't content with bootstrapping everything, because it didn't create the level of quality they preferred. Eventually, they employed professionals to make sure that the framing and print quality met their high standards. And that commitment to high standards seems to have paid off. George is currently exhibiting his first solo show The Women, The Paper, and The Light at ARTE NOIR Gallery in Seattle until February 2, 2025. I wrote a detailed analysis of the exhibition which is a portrait art show that celebrates the beauty and legacy of Black women in fine art. You can read my in-depth analysis of the exhibition on Arte Noir’s website.
When I first interviewed George Jennings and his wife four years ago for the South Seattle Emerald, we were less than 3 months into the pandemic. George was planning his first solo show that was slated to premiere at the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) in 2022 but none of us imagined that state-ordered closures and restrictions would last more than 3 years. At the time, I was interviewing artists in Seattle and asking them how they were being impacted by the pandemic. George was candid about his feelings.
"Well, I guess the first thing is fear," George said. "The fear that things won't return back to the way they were. I have that planned show at the Northwest African American Museum two and a half years from now, which, you know, on one hand I thought it was pretty far off. And then when this happened, now I'm thinking either that may not ever happen, that it may be pushed back or that it will be fortunate for me that it was two and a half years off. I just wonder, are we going to have crowds because every artist at their first big art show is hoping to have a great opening night with crowds of people. But that may not be possible in the near future."
Even as uncertainty loomed in 2020, George and NaKeesa embraced a glass-half-full attitude. Since they could no longer depend on promoting George Jennings Art at physical galleries and museums during the pandemic, they adapted and went virtual. In the early days of the pandemic, NaKeesa took the lead and built a virtual gallery where George showcased his work in live-streamed studio tours on Facebook.
"I think it was a decision that should have been made earlier on, but you know, starting out, we were still playing the same art game that every other artist had played up until that point," George said of his decision to take his art online and leverage social media. "I think the biggest thing for me is that I was not very enthusiastic about putting myself out there as far as social media or anything like that. I'm still not comfortable doing it because I know that it doesn't come off as polished as I wish it would. … When you're doing social media, and I guess also a gallery show, you're not just selling your art, you're selling yourself. I'm not that type of person. I'm not trying to make you purchase anything because you like my personality or something like that. So that's really difficult for me. I want my art to stand on its own."
NaKeesa gave a knowing smile as George voiced his apprehension.
"We are almost polar opposites when it comes to that,” NaKeesa said as we burst into a knowing laughter. “Because we want to be real and we want to be authentic and share what it's really like. … First of all, I'm an outgoing person, and because I do a lot of public things in my professional life and in my community work, I have no problem getting on a stage, getting on a mic, being recorded, and doing an interview with little to no notice. And I'm a lot more active on social media than George, and I have been for years, so I understand that. … But I am also very clear that a lot of times, people will be introduced to you or be introduced to your work through their interest in you.”
NaKeesa went on to explain that many people are initially drawn to them because of their story as a power couple where one is an artist while the other handles business and marketing. It’s a reality that George had slowly learned to embrace but it wasn’t his only major change. He had also transitioned from traditional mediums such as oils and acrylics to digital art.
“When I first started looking at digital art, it wasn't too appealing to me because it just had that 1980s special effects look to it,” George said. “It did not look as good as traditional art, and it was because computer processing and programming and, you know, at that time, it wasn't up there. And the tools that were needed weren't available. So, it was almost like videogaming back in the beginning, when you were loading programs by typing in things at the command prompt. And it was pretty rudimentary. I look back, just in the last 10 years, how far we’ve come with drawing tablets and what the iPad can do, the iPad Pro, what it can do, and then the programming and the pricing of programs coming down, and three-dimensional stuff and Physically Based Rendering and that sort of thing. And with 3D and virtual reality, it's almost limitless now. I remember listening to an artist who made a transition from traditional to digital art. He said the biggest thing is the overwhelming possibilities to the traditional artists, because your tools are almost limitless. Everything you can imagine you can do if you've learned the tools. So that's what I'm mainly excited about. It was a hard thing going from that tangible paint on canvas or drawing, and that one off piece to be sold to that one person to being respected for doing digital art. But for me, it comes down to getting the image that I wanted to get out of my head, and the digital tools were much better for that.”
You can view George Jennings’ The Women, The Paper, and The Light, digital portraits printed on metal, at ARTE NOIR Gallery in Seattle until February 2, 2025.
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