MCAD Alum Jennie Ward Featured on Prairie Public | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

MCAD Alum Jennie Ward Featured on Prairie Public

March 15, 2026
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Jennie Ward in Praire Public Feature

A new segment on Prairie Public spotlights painter Jennie Ward ’99, whose abstract expressionist canvases are rooted in the rhythms of rural Minnesota life.

Ward, who lives on a hobby farm in Lake Park, balances life as a wife and mother of two with the daily demands of tending animals, and the physical, intuitive process of oil painting. In the feature, she describes painting as both “play” and a spiritual act, driven by the color, texture and scent of oil paint. “It’s not work,” she says. “[It’s] a way to be someone that I know I am.”

Raised in Detroit Lakes, Ward says she always loved to draw but discovered her passion for painting in her first college painting class. While working at the Walker Art Center as a student, she encountered a retrospective by abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell that proved transformative.

Ward applies paint in an energetic, responsive manner, working without a predetermined image and allowing each composition to develop organically. Ward describes the movement between palette and canvas as “like a dance,” emphasizing that there are no rules in her studio.

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The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) acknowledges it is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. This is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We recognize that this place has a complex and layered history. As a community dedicated to creativity, MCAD is committed to ongoing efforts to support and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples.


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