As a child, Jennifer spent lots of time drawing and although she discovered her grandmother’s oil paints when she was eleven, Jennifer did not begin to paint seriously until 2002.   Up until that point she was on a quest to do sociopolitical international work.   Jennifer completed a Ph.D. in sociology in 2001 from the University of Texas at Austin.  Graduate school came and went replete with repeated introspection.  Although she met academic challenges, she longed for creative expression. The highlight of her doctoral education was the completion of an anthropological study on human migration in Chiapas, Mexico where she lived for a little under a year.  Still feeling uncertain about her path, Jennifer remained in Austin and worked doing socioeconomic research and population analyses following graduate school.   It was not until August of 2001 that she would embrace her passion, to be a painter.