Jean Pilk, 1924 - 2021
Jean Pilk was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri where her drawing skills were nurtured and encouraged from an early age. Her fascination with capturing the likenesses of her subjects propelled her studies through The Arts Students League and beyond.
Jean married into the military and raised her five children in homes she set up around the United States as well as Germany, Panama, and Bolivia. While her true passion was painting in oil, Jean also had a career as a successful commercial artist in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. Her portraits can be found in the US Capital, the Pentagon and many state capitals. Though her life ended in Palmyra, Virginia, her work lives on and continues to be discovered and appreciated.
More about Jean
In 1962 a beautiful young artist had a chance encounter with a handsome Army officer. In spite of their many differences, it was love at first sight. The foundation of their lives together was an environment filled with art and antiques, books and music, travel and adventure - and an increasing number of children. With each child came a unique and passionate connection to the creativity that surrounded them - the visionary, the theoretician, the writer, the designer, and the builder. The seeds of the nascent Pilk Design Collective had been sown. Jean Pilk’s dreams had been made manifest.
Their lives were filled with chaos, laughter, and no small amount of love. The family traveled the globe, living in places distant and domestic. Jean, a portrait painter first and foremost, also worked as a successful commercial artist and an art teacher. Her output throughout her career was prodigious, though the organization of the work was haphazard at best.
To say that Jean Pilk's archives were left in disorder upon her passing would be an understatement. Never one to be concerned with administrative details, she left behind scores of boxes filled with slides, clippings, photographs, and correspondence with no mention of names, dates, or places on most of the materials she so casually stored away. PILK Design Collective has cataloged and curated all the images and ephemera left behind, discovering little-known facts and events in the life of this remarkable artist in the process.