Gifted oil painter Jennipher Satterly has gradually been making her way from behind her easel onto center stage of the golf world.
Trained academically as a professional fine artist and having established her credentials as a painter of still-life, landscapes, and portraits, she has now been engaged in the world of private clubs and world-class resorts, pre-eminently. Her recent showcase of works depicting Pebble Beach, including solo shows at the coveted Golf Links to the Past at the Lodge at Pebble Beach, is but one piece of evidence of her newfound prominence
Her recent ascension to the post of President of the Academy of Golf Art attests to the esteem her peers have acquired for her work, Now comes word from the home of golf that Satterly has been licensed by the St. Andrews Links Trust to paint their golf courses, including the famed Old Course. She is the first contemporary artist with an MFA officially accorded this responsibility. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity and dream realized. I’m thrilled and honored to be selected for this work,” she said.
Satterly, an avid life-long golfer has just returned from Scotland from a nearly two-week immersion in the seven golf courses managed by the SALT. She wasn’t playing golf, however. “No time,” she says.
Instead, she focused on research for a series of paintings, for her next solo exhibition. While the Old Course will capture the bulk of her attention, she has now made close study of the New, Jubilee and Castle Courses, as well as visited with course grounds keeping and the day-to-day maintenance staff. This approach is standard to her practice. In her new role as painter for the Links Trust, she also plans to absorb and revisit the sensibility of the town’s history and golf culture. “It’s been such a gift to be back in Scotland. It is such a magical place. Treasures await those who are truly looking, especially at the home of golf,” she says.
Satterly’s method is to make careful, sustained studies of golf course scenes and then go back to her studio to paint. Whereas some landscape painters rely upon on-the-scene painting, a method called “en plen air,” Satterly finds that such an approach bounds the artist’s painting practice to the particular conditions of weather and light, potentially restricting the expression of experiencing how a golfer feels in that place at the moment.
Her own preference is to spend many days studying the course, taking photos and copious notes, ambling about, making sketches, listening to the stories of its people, and then studying her notes and imagery before painting. “It’s not as if one method is right or wrong,” she says. “For me, it is always a symphony for the senses. I learn things through listening, extended observation and walking the course that one could not perceive if there tethered to a canvas.”
She’s well trained for the job of capturing golf landscape, having studied painting and earned her Master of Fine Art degree at the revered Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. For years she painted still-life, landscapes, and formal portraiture. Her private commissioned work is in the collections of both Mount Vernon and the White House.
Besides private golf commissions, she’s done cover art (the par-3 7th hole at Pebble Beach) for the Journal of the Golf heritage Society and the Society of Hickory Golfers. Her rendition of the tenth green at Monterey Peninsula Country Club was featured as the official commemorative painting and famed collectable poster of the 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Recently she was featured in a Golf Channel segment highlighting innovative women in the golf industry.
For those who might (mistakenly) think that golf art is more golf than art, Jennipher Satterly’s growing portfolio is evidence to the contrary.