Joshua Jenkins is a painter and multidisciplinary artist whose work is shaped by the contrasting landscapes of his life—growing up in Poughkeepsie, New York, with frequent exposure to the urban energy of New York City and Philadelphia, alongside formative years spent in rural Kentucky. This duality continues to inform his visual language, where the grit and immediacy of the city intersect with the quiet intensity of the countryside, creating a balance between raw expression and emotional atmosphere.

Jenkins primary work is figurative and rooted in Expressionism, drawing inspiration from artists such as Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, and Cy Twombly. His figurative works are also influenced by the visual immediacy of street art, Naïve Art, and Pop Art. Through bold color, gestural mark-making, and mixed media processes, he constructs layered compositions that explore identity, masculinity, vulnerability, and human connection through the lens of his experience as a gay man. The male figure remains central to his practice—often distorted, fragmented, or emotionally charged—as a means of examining both personal and collective experiences of selfhood and belonging.

While figurative painting continues to anchor his work, his practice has gradually expanded into broader interdisciplinary and abstract approaches in recent years. Across painting, collage, and material experimentation, he is increasingly interested in surface, texture, and the accumulation of time. Drawing inspiration from weathered urban environments, natural decay, found materials, and digital manipulation, he embraces spontaneity, imperfection, and chance within the creative process. Industrial textures, layered marks, spills, and erosion become visual records of tension, transformation, and endurance.

Currently based in Louisville, Kentucky, but originally from Poughkeepsie, NY with family ties in both Southern New Jersey and Central Kentucky.

Jenkins uses Acrylic has his primary medium mixed in with various other mediums such as charcoal, graphite, pen, gouache, industrial spray paint, colored pencil, pastels, and more recently oil paint.

Jenkins is currently open to commission work, but please note that he will only paint in his known style and may potentially turn down a request if he doesn’t feel it fits his process or direction of art.

Jenkins has been drawing all of his life. Starting off with doodles he got more series into cartoon illustration during high school, but then once in college turned his attention to the fine arts.

He has been professionally painting since 2010 when he sold his first painting to an admiring collector and has since been painting non stop.