Courtesy Elena Jenkins
Elena Jenkins’ “They May Tame The Flesh, But They May Not Tame The Spirit: We Will Not Be Silent.”
It’s impossible to miss the painting when walking into Tower Grove South’s Drip Community Coffeehouse. It’s not just that it’s large. It also exudes power — which is really what catches the eye.
It’s a portrait of a woman from the shoulders up. She’s Black, wearing a green hoodie and gazes out at the viewer with serious but seemingly calm eyes. Her mouth is covered by an American flag contoured to the shape of her face.
Titled “They May Tame The Flesh, But They May Not Tame The Spirit: We Will Not Be Silent,” the painting is by St. Louis artist Elena Jenkins, and the model is her daughter.
She says the painting was inspired by the MeToo movement and the women’s rights activism she witnessed around it. “Just watching what was happening around me and thinking about my daughter — I have three daughters,” she says. “I know her eyes so well, but they speak volumes like, she’s being muzzled but is not going to be silent.”
Jessica Rogen
Elena Jenkins is one of the co-owners of the Drip Community Coffeehouse in Tower Grove South.
Created in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it was Jenkins’ first oil painting; she had worked mostly with acrylics since picking up painting seriously in 2018. Like most of her work, it’s imbued with meaning drawn from Jenkins’ life and passions: a labor and delivery nursing manager at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, she’s ardent about everything from the fight to improve Black maternal health to protecting young, Black men from the violence in the U.S.
She mostly paints portraits, and her subjects tend to stare out at the viewer with eyes filled with meaning. You can see this in Jenkins’ “Broken Promises,” which depicts a young Black woman set against a fire-filled background with a tattered American flag behind her. She’s frowning, and her eyes are fierce, a brown-red that seems to reflect the blaze behind her.
Jenkins painted this during COVID-19 as wildfires seemed poised to overtake the country.
“It just felt like everything was just going nuts,” she says. “Everything that we took for granted in this country was being turned on its head, so that’s why the tattered flag and wanting that resilience to come through. I feel like that’s a lot of what shows in the eyes.”
Oftentimes, Jenkins starts with an idea and then might tap a family member or friend as a model. But she also finds inspiration wherever it strikes. Recently, as she worked on a series for a local nonprofit, Jenkins came across a woman holding her baby at the bus stop and asked permission to take her photo for a future painting. She did the same after seeing another mom holding her daughter in the park.
“I can see the painting in my head before I take the picture,” Jenkins says. “So it’s really easy to pick the subject.”
Recently, she’s been working on a series about maternal health for Black mothers and hopes to help raise awareness of the issues and elevate those who are working to decrease disparities.
This overlap between art and health-care advocacy might be surprising — until you hear that they’ve been twin passions for Jenkins almost her whole life. Ever since she was 14 growing up in Seattle, Jenkins has been “dead set on” being both a nurse and an artist.
She comes from a family of health-care practitioners, but her formative moment came after her cousin shared experiences of working as a candy striper, as teenage hospital volunteers used to be called, and holding a newborn withdrawing from substance use. That certainty held through nursing school and clinicals and even after Jenkins entered the workforce.
It was in Seattle that Jenkins met her now-partner LaTosha Baker, who is the driving force behind the couple’s recently opened coffeehouse in Tower Grove South. Helping run Drip Community Coffeehouse, painting and working as a nurse is a lot — especially because Jenkins is also working on her doctorate of nursing practice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
“It’s pure comedy,” she says of balancing it all. “But I like challenges, and I’m really passionate about a lot of things.”
When Jenkins wraps up that degree, she has another challenge in mind: She’d like to open a birth center and step back from the bedside and become an administrator after 20 years of working in labor and delivery.
Plus, she says, that might give her more time to work on her art.
“That’s my passion,” she says.
See more of Jenkins’ work at cobygallery.net. Prints of her paintings are available for purchase and begin at $150.
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