While art faculty member Jennifer Jarnot helps students paint a bigger picture for their future, she is often working on her own creations behind the scenes.

Jarnot’s artwork will be featured in an upcoming solo art exhibition at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Kan. The exhibition will begin Sept. 7 and continue until Oct. 27.

“The show consists of 30 paintings, 20 of which are from 2012,” Jarnot said. “So the majority of the work is all brand new from this year. They’re all paintings, oil on canvas.”

The 30 pieces of artwork are a combination of paintings based on collections and paint-by-numbers. Jarnot draws her inspiration from collections from the 1950s and antique stores. She photographs the collections and places between 40 and 50 photographs into Photoshop. From there, she combines the photos into layers and creates a design from which she creates a painting. The paint-by-numbers theme features landscapes, cats, dogs, flower vases and “all those classic, traditional mass-produced scenes that you would normally see in those painting kits.”

Jarnot found out about the exhibition at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center last October after sending her artwork to the gallery two years ago.

“That’s usually the time period it takes for a gallery to contact an artist after you send your work in,” Jarnot said. “So the owner came along, the curator, to my studio and had an interview with me and looked at my work.”

Jarnot’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally. According to her site, www.jenniferjarnot.com, she has been to exhibitions as far away as Los Angeles and New York City, and as close as Lawrence and in Baldwin City.

“I’ve had a few solo shows. I had a solo show in Lawrence two years ago and one in Wichita last year,” Jarnot said. “But this is a really big deal because it is a solo exhibition in Kansas City in one of the top three galleries in Kansas City. So that’s a big accomplishment.”

Jarnot’s 30 years of art experience is beneficial to her students, as she passes on advice along the way.

“For people that are art majors, it really helps because she knows how the studios work and the owners and managers of those studios work,” senior Milan Piva said. “She just gives students connections to also get their artwork into those same studios.”

Although many students are enrolled in art classes for a just semester at a time, Jarnot helps them see past just the picture in front of them.

“Everything that I learn as an artist, I pass along to my students,” Jarnot said. “And that includes things such as how to get shows in galleries; things that come after their time as an undergraduate student.”