BIO
Jennifer Herrold is a narrative painter based in Bloomington, Indiana. Each of her paintings tells a distinct story, drawn variously from personal memory, historical events, Midwestern folklore, urban legends, and imaginative invention. Some are set in recognizable places—hair salons, kitchens, libraries, county fairs, or unusual small-town shops—where humor, anxiety, and absurdity transform ordinary life into something psychologically unsettled.
Herrold grew up in a family of artists and educators. Her mother is a textile artist whose bold striped weavings influenced her use of saturated color, pattern, and visual rhythm. Her father was a ceramics professor and an innovator in early digital graphics and 3-D clay printing. His willingness to combine traditional materials with emerging technologies encouraged Herrold’s own experimental approach. He also taught her to develop compositions by moving paper elements around a canvas until achieving the right balance.
Herrold studied painting, drawing, and metalsmithing at Interlochen Arts Academy, where she received a metalsmithing scholarship and the President’s Award for Painting. She earned her degree in Painting and Literature from Indiana University and later pursued graduate study as an MFA candidate in graphic design and was an Associate Instructor. Her education in painting, metalsmithing, and design contributed to a distinct visual language characterized by defined shapes, bold color, and visible revisions. An undergraduate professor compared her bordered forms to cloisonné, the decorative process in which metal lines separate areas of colored enamel.
After completing her undergraduate degree, Herrold lived in Ann Arbor and Brooklyn where she assisted sculptor Nancy Bowen. She traveled throughout Europe, Mexico, and Central America, gathering visual impressions and stories that would continue to inform her work. In Costa Rica, she redesigned a boat belonging to locals who gave crocodile tours—this became a painting.
Returning to the Midwest gave Herrold the space to sustain an independent studio practice. Over more than twenty-five years, she has created individual narrative paintings as well as bodies of work like Renaissance Pinball and a recurring Ex-Boyfriend Series. She has also completed hundreds of commissioned portraits, strengthening her command of observation, anatomy, and character.
Herrold has exhibited regularly throughout the US, including numerous solo and group exhibitions, Her work and story has been recently featured in Bloom Magazine and The Herald-Times as well as a podcast, The Human Canvas. Her current project, What the Paintings Remember, revisits imagery fromwork made between 2000 and 2026, allowing characters, objects, and stories from different periods of her career to meet in newly imagined scenes.
Contact
STUDIO: 765–721–3424
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