Multi-award-winning painter, printmaker and drawer Jenny Doležel was born in Auckland in 1964 of New Zealand / Czechoslovakian ancestry. Her mother, Margo Doležel, was a talented painter and drawer, who encouraged Doležel's talent from an early age. They are both related to Sir David Low, the New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist. Jenny Doležel began drawing as soon as she could hold a pencil or a crayon. As a small child she remembers drawing in her mother's studio-kitchen while her mother painted at her easel, and where she learnt so much about art such as colour theory and the great masters, to wonderful bed-time stories when she was little where her mother read to her or made up stories - transporting them both to another world, and where she learnt the power of the imagination to escape. Doležel graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1987, and received her first Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Grant that same year. In 1988 TVNZ's art programme 'Kaleidoscope' made a documentary on Doležel's art, directed by Roger Price. Doležel has won 24 major art awards so far - mainly in painting - the first being the Rosemary Grice Award in 1983. Her awards include winning First Prize in the Overseas League Overseas Award in London, UK, in 1996, where her oil on canvas 'Life Doesn't Frighten Me' was given the highest of honours of all the Commonwealth countries' entries; also she was the Paramount Winner the same year in the Wallace Art Awards with her oil on canvas 'Charm School'; to in 2006 winning the 1st Prize in the Parklane Art Awards as well as being the Supreme Winner in the 2006 Team McMillan BMW Bonnet Art Awards. Artist-in-Residence programmes that Doležel has participated in include the Rita Angus Residency in Wellington, NZ, and the Goethe Institute in Berlin, Germany, as a cultural scholarship. Doležel lectured in Painting and Printmaking at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, and tutored at several art school programmes in the mid-90's and 2000's, but chose to leave both although she loved lecturing and tutoring, as she had so many art opportunities she wanted to pursue, and ongoing artistic projects. Murals by Doležel grace many city spaces, having received numerous public art commissions, such as 'The City Dreaming', SkyCity, Auckland; 'The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay', for The Boathouse, Sydney, Australia; and 'The Circus of Life', the Aotea Arts Centre, Auckland. Doležel exhibits widely throughout New Zealand, with solo exhibitions, also in the US and Europe. She has participated in many international Print Biennales, Triennales, and group exhibitions of her work in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the US and Europe. Her work is represented in collections in most public art galleries and museums in New Zealand; and also in Australia and Europe, as well as in numerous private collections throughout the world. Jenny Doležel lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand and Berlin, Germany.