“These drawings and prints are based on the lakes, reservoirs, rivers and streams, dams, levees, and empty creek beds that I observed on my travels across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona between 2017 and 2018. Water is represented in its many states: low water and high water, frozen and unfrozen, stagnant, free-flowing, and dried-up. Its power and abundance are presented alongside evidence of manipulation, fragility and scarcity. Water crashes and roars over rocks, it laps at river banks and meanders slowly across the land. I am drawn to it because of its enduring nature: it keeps going over time, on and on, eternally finding its way. Large ink drawings transform my observations into gestural abstract compositions that embody the landscape and create the sensation of water in its various forms.” - Janzen

Gesine Janzen’s artwork has been shown in numerous exhibitions across America, including a recent solo show at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana and group shows in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. Additionally, her artwork has been published in many professional publications such as “Art in Print”, and she has been a visiting artist and workshop instructor in Berlin, Germany, and Poznan, Poland. Janzen’s artwork is included in multiple corporate and public collections, such as the Hallmark Collection in Kansas City and the Artist/Printmaker Research Collection at the Museum of Texas Tech University. She studied art at Bethel College and at the University of Kansas. In 1998 she received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa. She was a lecturer in printmaking at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and the Kansas City Art Institute and worked as Assistant Printer at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri for three years. Gesine is Associate Professor of Art and Head of Printmaking at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.