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teach children, she  agreed to allow her to paint with the group of artists who gathered on Saturdays in the studio. 
In high school, Jennifer continued to draw and occasionally paint, but her focus was largely academic.  She secretly entertained a dream of being an artist, but lacked the confidence to pursue it.  In 1988, she entered the University of Delaware as an English major.  However, with the support and encouragement of her high school art teacher and a professor at the U of D, she changed her major to fine arts within a year.  In 1992, she received a BFA in printmaking and painting.
Jennifer moved to Jackson, Wyoming in 1996 to focus on her interest in landscape painting.  In the years since, she has been studio assistant to Scott Christensen, where she learned volumes about plein-air and studio painting, and subsequently  worked the National Museum of Wildlife Art, where she was employed for over 6 years.  At the Museum, she was exposed to the works of masterful painters like Carl Rungius and Bob Kuhn.  She has had many chances to paint with accomplished artists.  "I am amazed by the abundant opportunities to learn; I try to take advantage of all I can," she says.
She is particularly grateful for the mentoring and friendship of a number of artists like Laney, Kathy Wipfler, Bob Seabeck, Greg McHuron, Bill Sawczuk, and Ned Jacob who have encouraged her to truly work at art, to make it not just her passion but her practice.

The artist makes her home in Hoback Junction, Wyoming, at the mouth of the Snake River and Hoback Canyons, with her talented and supportive husband Ron (an art installer and lighting specialist) and daughter Amelia.  She is an annual participant in the National Museum of Wildlife Art's Western Visions show, and has been included in the Oil Painters of America's Western Regional Exhibition in Kirkland, WA;  Reflections in Pastel, a national juried exhibition in Little Rock, AR; and the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painter's Invitational event in Tucson, AZ, among others.   She was recently invited to participate in The Russell at the C. M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, MT.  Recent awards include an Best of Show in the First Annual Autumn Arts Painting Challenge (an international painting competition and show in New Hope, PA), an Award of Merit at the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters' National Exhibition in Winter Park, CO, and 3rd Place in Landscape in the 9th Annual Pastel 100, sponsored by the Pastel Journal.  Hoffman is a member of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters, the Oil Painters of America, the American Impressionist Society, and a signature member of the Pastel Society of America.
Jennifer Hoffman Gessler was born and raised in a Pennsylvania German family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  She began drawing nearly as soon as she could hold a pencil.  At the age of nine, her mother gave her a set of oil paints, and she began experimenting with landscape and portrait painting. Soon after, she took a number of her paintings and drawings to show a local artist, Evelyn Favus Richin, who kept a studio across the street from the family's home.  Though Mrs. Richin did not usually
All images © jlhoffman, 2002-2008.  No reproduction of any kind without express written permission from the artist.
Photo © Marilyn C. Paine, 2007.
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