Studio Artist Jenny Santi: Gardens I Never Knew

We are pleased to share that our studio artist Jenny Santi will present her upcoming exhibition Gardens I Never Knew at the Philippine Center New York from March 16–27, 2026.

In this new body of paintings, Santi explores the emotional and psychological experience of nature through gesture, color, and abstraction. Rather than depicting botanical forms directly, the works evoke the sensation and memory of landscapes, with floral impressions emerging through rhythm, movement, and layered surfaces. The paintings invite viewers into a quieter mode of attention and offer a moment of calm within the speed and saturation of contemporary life.

Born in Manila and based in New York, Santi works between abstraction and botanical suggestion, creating atmospheric compositions that reflect her lifelong relationship to dense urban environments and fleeting encounters with nature. Her multidisciplinary background, including training at the Florence Academy of Art and the Art Students League of New York, shapes a practice that treats beauty not as decoration but as a stabilizing and reflective presence.

We warmly congratulate Jenny on this exhibition and encourage visitors in New York to experience the work in person.

About the Artist

Jenny Santi (b. Manila, Philippines) is a New York–based Filipino artist whose painting practice explores beauty and the psychological experience of nature as imagined rather than lived. Working between abstraction and botanical suggestion, she creates gestural environments that emphasize atmosphere, sensation, and emotional resonance over representation. Her work is shaped by a lifelong relationship to dense urban environments, where encounters with nature were fleeting, fragmentary, and often mediated by distance.

Having lived almost exclusively in urban centers including Manhattan, Manila, London, and Singapore, Santi came to know gardens and green spaces through brief, passing encounters. These conditions inform her ongoing interest in nature as a grounding force, standing in quiet opposition to systems that treat the natural world primarily as something to be exploited for economic gain. Influenced by her background as a writer and psychotherapist, she describes painting as a “productive meditation,” using organic forms and layered surfaces to explore how color, gesture, and rhythm can calm, hold, and affect the inner life. Beauty in her work is treated not as decoration, but as a stabilizing presence within contemporary experience.

Santi’s multidisciplinary background informs both the structure and sensitivity of her practice. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and has worked across business, philanthropy, and mental health, experiences that sharpen her attention to process and emotional nuance. She trained at the Florence Academy of Art and the Art Students League of New York, where she studied contemporary nonobjective painting with James Little. Her work has received multiple Best in Show awards at the League’s student salons, has been featured on Artsy, and has been exhibited at the National Arts Club in New York City. Her paintings are held in various private collections, including that of Lionel Richie.