Jenness Cortez

Jenness Cortez is an American realist painter born in Frankfort, Indiana, in 1944. She began formal art training at sixteen under Dutch-born painter Antonius Raemaekers, whose emphasis on drawing and traditional technique became an important foundation for her career. Cortez later earned her B.F.A. from the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and continued her studies with Arnold Blanch at the Art Students League of New York. She eventually settled in Upstate New York, establishing her studio in Averill Park and developing a career that has spanned more than five decades.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Cortez became widely known for sporting art and, in particular, her accomplished depictions of horses. For roughly two decades, equestrian subjects formed a major part of her practice, combining precise draftsmanship with an intimate understanding of anatomy, movement, and the traditions of American sporting painting. During the 1990s, her longstanding interest in landscape developed into another significant body of work, influenced by the Hudson River and Barbizon traditions and grounded in close observation of the natural world.

Cortez later developed the body of work for which she has become especially recognized today: intricate contemporary realist paintings that incorporate and reinterpret celebrated works from art history. Her compositions may include references to artists such as Vermeer, Monet, Van Gogh, Sargent, Rockwell, Remington, Picasso, and Warhol, placing familiar images within carefully arranged interiors, still lifes, and narrative settings. Rather than simply reproducing earlier masterpieces, Cortez uses them as part of larger visual conversations about creativity, memory, history, and the enduring influence of art. Books, sculpture, antiques, photographs, and everyday objects frequently appear alongside these painted references, giving viewers layers of imagery and meaning to discover.

Her work has entered numerous public and private collections, including those associated with Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II, the New York State Museum, Skidmore College, and SUNY Empire State College. Across equestrian painting, landscape, Western subjects, and her signature art-within-art compositions, Cortez has remained committed to classical realist technique while continually expanding the subjects and ideas that technique can explore. ×