Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Gretchen Jeens studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design majoring in Drawing and Painting. Dividing residence between Markham and Muskoka, she devotes her love of art to representing images of personal significance. Her focus is mainly on the experience of women, through figurative painting, but she also explores the natural world of landscape and still life. Working comfortably in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pencil, and pen, she achieves a whimsicality in the application of the chosen medium while delighting in the physical and emotional act of painting itself.