About the Artist
Bio
Hello! My name is Jenny and my husband's name is Jason. We are both artists. We met while attending Otis College of Art and Design where I studied painting and he studied Illustration. These days I'm remembering to talk to God about art so that my mind is fed with godly ideas.
Education
1999 – 2003 Otis College of Art and Design, Bachelor’s of Fine Art
2003 – 2005 Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China
2007 – 2009 Cal State Long Beach
2024 Harvard Extension School
At Work in the Studio
Here is a photo of myself at work in a previous studio space. In this picture I'm working on a larger painting of a horse. The palette is on my left side because I'm left handed. Several sketches I'm working from are on my right side. Why, yes, my hair is very long. It's actually longer than this now. I haven't cut or trimmed it in some years.
Art Shows
2025 - OPA Fall Online Showcase
2023 - SOBO Gallery, Mix and Match, Winter Garden, FL
2023 - Mount Dora Center for the Arts, 1 Day Quick Draw, Mount Dora, FL
2023 - SOBO Gallery, Epic Show, Winter Garden, FL
2022 - Randy Higbee Gallery, 6x6 Show, Costa Mesa, CA
2022 - God’s Sunset, Artist Alley Gallery, Monrovia, CA
2021 - Randy Higbee Gallery, 6x6 Show, Costa Mesa, CA
2021 – 5x5x5, River Oaks Square Arts Center, Alexandria, LA
2021 – Boston Court Pasadena Art Project, Pasadena, CA
2020 – SFVACC Open Art Exhibit, San Fernando Valley, CA
2019 – Mini Landscapes Solo Show, Color Buffet, Glendora, CA
2018 – Solo Show, Color Buffet, Glendora, CA
2016 – Summer Splash, Mistlin Gallery, Modesto, CA
2016 – Central California Arts Showcase, Carnegie Arts Center, CA
2016 – 56th Annual Spring Art Show, Woodbridge Winery, CA
2016 – Impressions and Abstracts, Mistlin Gallery, Modesto, CA
2013 – Artists in Wuhan, Mr. Mai's Coffee Shop, Wuhan, China
2008 – Personified Trees, Solo Show, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA
2003 – Otis Senior Show, Otis College, Los Angeles, CA
Article Online about me: https://boldjourney.com/meet-jenny-gano/
Testimony (An important way that God has helped me in my life)
When I was young, in grade school and high school, I was a very shy kid. I hardly talked to people. I would let others decide what to do and I listened far more than I spoke. The reason I did this is because I was afraid of people.
Fears are not logical. You can’t reason your way out of them. I was afraid that I was always wrong and others were always right even though logically I knew this wasn’t true. I felt that if I were to open my mouth to say something it would be immediately shot down as wrong even if it wasn’t. I was also particularly afraid of people with authority; leaders, teachers, and most adults. When I was young I never hoped to become free of this fear even though I knew it wasn’t a logical fear. I accepted it as part of me because I had only ever remembered being that way. I hoped that in the future I would find a job that didn’t involve speaking to many people.
When I was in college a friend of mine invited me to an event. As part of preparing to go to the event she asked me to write down a list of 100 prayer requests. I shrugged it off at first since it seemed like an excessively long task. However, she was persistent so I wrote a list that ended up being a bit more that 100 prayer requests. Most of the prayer requests were related to not wanting to be afraid of other people. I took the list with me to the event expecting there would be a time listed on the schedule for everyone to pray for items on a list they had prepared. This was not the case. There was no dedicated time for praying for a list that I had written out.
Not wanting to waste all the energy I has spent creating the list I decided to make a time to pray for what I had written out. At night when other conference attendees were going to sleep I went to a place where I knew those I shared a room with wouldn’t be disturbed, the bathroom. I prayed in the bathroom for the things I had written on my list for about an hour. After an hour I hadn’t made it through my whole list but I was getting sleepy and decided it was time to go to bed. I wasn’t particularly expecting my prayers to be answered. I thought to myself that at least I had put in an effort and made use of the list.
Amazingly, in the morning I felt different. I wasn’t afraid to speak to other college students around me. This was a new and surprising experience to me. I even stood up in front of the group to tell them how God had taken away my fear. Doing this would have been extremely difficult for me before.
God reached down into my life to bring about a change that I could never have done myself and I didn’t even hope to receive. The claws of fear that gripped me were removed. Not all of my fear left overnight but a significant chunk of it did. Another part of the fear was removed about six months later when I agreed to go into a situation that I thought might cause me great anxiety. It did actually lead to a panic attack. Then a gentle friend who saw my struggle prayed with me and more of my fear left me at that time.
I am so small compared to God yet God cares so much for me anyway. We are tiny people but precious in His sight. In my life the verse that I’ve often taken comfort in is one where the apostle Paul was writing to a young Timothy in 2nd Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
