Before Jenna Horner got to the University of Florida, she knew she was an artist.
But it took UF to tell her she was a painter.
Horner (BA ’14) submitted her portfolio to the College of the Arts in 2012 for admission into the drawing program, attracted by the meticulous nature of the medium.
When she got her acceptance notice, she was in the painting program.
“The university essentially saw something in my portfolio, in my work, that made me a painter,” Horner says. “Once I got into painting, it was very clear to me that I was a painter. My experience at the university was a discovery of who I am as an artist.”
Today, Gainesville residents enjoy Horner’s work all around town, thanks to that fork in her creative road.
It’s Horner’s art you’re enjoying if you stop for a bite at the Fourth Avenue Food Park, a brew at First Magnitude or outdoor gear at REI. At 50 murals and counting, the visual landscape of Gainesville owes much of its color to Horner.
Horner was a journeywoman right out of school. She worked at Painting With a Twist and Corks and Colors. She ran an art gallery and art walks for First Magnitude. She was a barista and a substitute teacher. She ran her own company, teaching painting in bars and restaurants.
“At one point, I had seven different jobs,” she says. “My professors reiterated that you can’t just jump into being an artist.”
When a six-month gig as a substitute teacher ended, she realized she needed to decide: teach art or make art. Her largest piece at that point was a 6-foot canvas, but she applied to 352walls, Gainesville’s urban art project, to be one of seven artists on a mural at Depot Park.
“It literally changed everything for me,” Horner says. “I fell in love with how challenging it was, the labor-intensive piece of it, of being on this scaffold and kind of feeling like I was on a jungle gym like a little kid. Every part of it I loved.”
A commission from World of Beer came next and people started seeing her work.
Through it all, she carries lessons from her time as a student, especially the relationship of discipline to art.
“UF helped me with the practice of what it is to show up to do creative work, the same way other people show up to do their work; the discipline in the practice of art,” she says.
Is it as strenuous as it looks?
A mural is basically creative construction work, very physically demanding depending on the space. I’m also a yoga teacher, which helps, but there’s physicality to the work.
Do you ever get it wrong? Do you ever paint a section and say, ‘oh no, I need to paint over this’?
I love that question, ‘do you get it wrong?’ You never get graded for your painting, so that’s a funny question to me. I would say I get a lot of things not right, rather than wrong.
Did your classes teach you how to do murals?
Nope. I had a class called Site-specific Painting, and that was cool in terms of being aware of our space. I remember being kind of lit up in that class; how much I cared about spaces and what people want to feel in a space. What’s around us matters.
What do you hope your murals do for a space or the people in it?
I’m creating energy for a space, for people to interact with. A lot of my work is based in nature, the beauty and magic of our surroundings, and the words are reminders to us to share the beauty of being here on the planet.
Do you choose the words in your murals or do the clients?
The language is mine for the most part. For me, language is a reminder to shift our perspective, and if we shift perspective, we can change. I want the murals to feel inclusive, so the “calling all human beings” part came from that, and the “just a reminder …” is the message. “Just a reminder to stay connected” is the one on Fifth Avenue. When you attach words to an image, it all becomes one.
Do you do interiors?
During COVID, I started painting in people’s homes. People who had seen the outdoor murals asked, and now I have a balance of working in private spaces and in public spaces, and I juggle those depending on weather and season.
How do you navigate weather? If it rains, does it wash away your work?
The easy answer is weather wins. It’s very humbling to plan my way through an exterior project, and then we’re in a hurricane, or it’s bright and sunny and then it’s raining. It’s Florida. Rain isn’t a huge enemy, though. The lucky part about painting in Florida is it’s so hot here that the paint dries quickly. These days it’s pretty rare that I get caught in the rain.
So, you’re a sunny day painter?
Heat is more my enemy than rain; I have gotten a heat stroke doing a mural. I no longer paint exterior murals in June, July and August. I save those months for interior work. I go inside in the summer and outside in the winter, like a snowbird.
What kind of paint do you use?
It’s latex house paint, so it dries fast and doesn’t drip. I do mix a lot, but I try to have colors that are readily available, especially for projects I know will need a touchup. I want to make sure the businesses can get the colors. Sometimes I do run out of something, and I’ve learned to match color pretty well, and that’s based on my experience as a student.
The colors seem more vibrant than house paint.
If I speak another language, it’s color. Color is my thing, it’s my jam. I can paint in different styles, but my relationship to the work is about my relationship to color and how color affects people in spaces.
How did your art education serve you as a muralist?
I learned quite a bit of color theory in school. I had a natural ability, but I kept learning and growing. People sometimes think art is a natural gift, and to some extent it is, but it’s also what you do with that gift, how you grow and add to it.
Was art your favorite subject before college?
I loved history because I like stories, and painting is creating a story. It embraces narrative, using our past to do something in the present and allowing it to last in the future. The only AP class I took was art.
Do you have a studio or is the outdoors your studio?
I have my own studio space at home, a whole extra area for making work. I use it as storage space as well. I have quite the inventory: multiple scaffolds, five different types of ladders and a paint inventory that goes from small tubes to gallons and five-gallon buckets.
It seems anywhere in town you can see one of your murals.
They really have taken up some real estate. It’s so beautiful to be part of a town that is progressive and growing and wanting to beautify space. Since COVID, we have a different perspective on our relationship to space, a universal experience. We know how much our environment can affect us. Sometimes I get emails from people who see a mural and say, “I needed to see this; it changed the rest of my day.”
Is working on a scaffold as tricky as it sounds?
The best thing you can do as a mural artist is pretend like you’ve never been on a ladder every time you’re on one. I’m around a lot of construction workers, I’ve gotten to know this crowd, and they comment that I have great ladder etiquette. I’ve had many things fall off my scaffolding that aren’t me, like paint. Lots of messes. Wind swipes half gallons of paint, and it lands on a brand-new sidewalk. I’ve dunked my hair in paint and had some serious haircuts. Humor is a massive part of this job.
Who’s your favorite artist?
I’ve always been a Van Gogh girl, loved the classics, and I’ve always loved surrealism, like Dali. I feel like I dance between those two loves of mine, where the weird and wacky meets nature. Any opportunity I get to be in a museum and admire the old masters I will take. I’m like an 80-year-old woman trapped in a 32-year-old body.
Favorite professors?
Julia Morrisroe, my advanced painting professor, was an incredible and impactful professor and is still a friend. I will go and have a beer with Julia to this day on her porch. I use old-school projectors, and Julia has also used those. Mine has busted on me twice, and I’ve called Julia: ‘I need a projector, and I need it tonight.’ She has saved the day with a projector at 10 p.m.
Why did you need a projector?
You can only project at night, so my entire next day’s work is based on projecting the drawing at night. The projector is mostly for lettering. I freehand most things, but that doesn’t mean it’s the smart thing to do, so I will project something I drew on an iPad or paper.
What would you like people to know?
I pray that my work can remind people of their own truth. That’s something that’s really beautiful about art; it can be interpreted in so many different ways. 
