"I am lucky in that I can work in many mediums. I have never tried to limit myself. I paint and draw. One thing that binds my work is color. Color is everything. I spend hours mixing colors, just to capture that certain hue."

On her colored pencil wildlife paintings:

"My animal paintings come from my soul. There is something about having a pencil in my hand and capturing the essence of these beautiful creatures that makes me feel incredibly peaceful."

With her work gracing the pages of leading books on colored pencil art, Helen is well known for her stunning, vibrant portraits of animals - images made even more powerful when one discovers that these intimate paintings are actually colored pencil drawings. Be it slumbering rhinos or four-horn sheep, Jennings draws with great accuracy and expertise, skillfully infusing her work with light and shadow, and a virtual kaleidoscope of color. Her mastery of a technique called burnishing, whereby colors are blended and smeared, gives her drawings a “painterly” look. It also leaves one with a sense that her images are intricate constructions of pure color.

"When I choose an animal that I want to draw, I sit for hours at a zoo or wildlife sanctuary, just observing and shooting rolls and rolls of film capturing the various subtleties of its behavior. Back at my studio, I always begin with the eyes of the animal and work them to near completion before anything else. To me, the eyes speak volumes, revealing an emotional truth that comes through in my paintings."

On her impressionistic landscape paintings:

"Simplicity, peace, balance, color. That’s nature’s magic. And, that’s what I try to capture in my landscape, garden and water scenes. I like to think that my work serves as a reminder, underscoring the often ignored truth that real peace resides in ourselves and nature."