ROSS JAHNKE

Ross Jahnke's work focuses on oil painting and printmaking, particularly woodcut prints and silkscreen prints. What unifies all the works is his conceptual approach to the figure and woodgrain as a tool to invigorate and delineate space.

Jahnke is widely recognized as a printmaker and a painter but he didn’t always want to pursue both concentrations in the arts. Having studied painting and drawing as an undergraduate and even in graduate school, Jahnke was coaxed into taking a printmaking course by another graduate assistant. By the time he graduated, he had expressively mixed the two media. “If a painting is like a symphony orchestra, then a print is like a string quartet. The music is no less complex or compelling but it is made with more limited means, and demands more from each of its component parts. I relish the challenge of printmaking where the visual and conceptual vocabulary is dictated by the process, and I need to problem-solve steps ahead to achieve an outcome,” says Jahnke.

Jahnke is currently a Full Professor of Art at Nicholls State University and teaches printmaking, color theory, and papermaking.