Mountain Made Asheville Artist Profile: Jenean Hornbuckle
Business/Studio: Cherokee
Type of work includes: Painting & Mixed Media
Work tagged as: oil painting
Bio/Artist Statement
Mountain Made gallery is happy to welcome Cherokee landscape painter, Jenean Hornbuckle. Jenean paints some the best mountain landscapes in oil on canvas, we have seen.
She believes that her extraordinary ability to capture the beautiful or our Western North Carolina mountains and to see their hidden power has been passed down over the years from her Cherokee ancestors.
She says that she has “a genetic memory (that) exists on a cellular level and is passed down from generation to generation,” a connection honored by her family.
Jenean’s mother was a Cherokee Nation citizen from Oklahoma, and her father was a member of Eastern Cherokee from the mountains of North Carolina.
Jenean was born on the Qualla Boundary near Cherokee NC. The Qualla Boundary is not a “reservation” but a territory held as a land trust for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Jenean says, “I’ve lived my life in western North Carolina and there’s no place I’d rather be than on a creek side or mountain top.
I paint to entice the viewer to go out and find these places and to experience the land. To listen to the quiet.
I heard a quote once that inspires my work: ‘I can not leave here, the land knows me.’ ”
Her father worked as a forester, protecting and preserving the mountains, and Jenean’s paintings also preserve the beauty of the mountains, in artistic form.
While the aesthetics of her paintings come from traditional Cherokee culture, she developed her technical skills in college classes where she worked to earn her fine arts degree.
