[ B I O G R A P H Y ]

Jean Arnold is a visual artist residing in Lewiston, Idaho. She has exhibited her paintings and drawings in numerous solo and group shows, regionally and nationally over several decades. Her work is found in many public, corporate, and private collections.

Growing up in the rolling farmland Palouse region in the Pacific Northwest, the sinuous, graphic quality of this land informed Jean’s shape-language and led her to combine perception and abstraction in her art. She began depicting the Palouse landscape at a formative age – college – and it influenced her visual sensibility from the mid-1990s on, even when living in Utah. She has returned to the area for a deeper, sustained engagement with the landscape. Visually, she’s drawn to scenes with strong abstract impact: color, shape, rhythm, pattern, and structure – in depicting field, forest, flowers, weather or water. Her emotional response magnifies and distills the image, calling viewers to open to visual poetics around them.

In 2023, Jean had a solo show, “Land Lines” at the Lewis Clark Center for Arts and History, Lewis Clark State College, Lewiston, ID. In 2022, she had a two-person show with Ellen Vieth, “Conversations”, at Moscow Contemporary, in Moscow, ID. She was included in Missoula Art Museum’s 2021 show, “Edge of the Abyss: Artists Picturing the Berkeley Pit”. In late 2026, Arnold will have a solo show at the Northwest Museum of Arts & History in Spokane, WA. She was the recipient of the Utah Arts Council Fellowship Award in 2002.

Arnold earned an MFA in 1999 from Northern Vermont University / Vermont Studio Center. She also studied at the International School of Art in Italy. In these programs, she received guidance from numerous artistic luminaries.