Rare Paul Jenkins (American 1923-2012) "Phenomina" Original Acrylic Painting. Measurements - 29 3/4" high x 22 5/8" wide, total with frame - 28 3/4" wide x 36 5/8" high. Signed lower left "Paul Jenkins". Paul Jenkins, a colorful Abstract Expressionist who came of age during the heyday of the New York School and for several decades carried on its highly physical tradition of manipulating paint and canvas, died on June 9 in Manhattan, where he lived and had continued to paint until recently. He was 88. In the late 1940s, joining a wave of aspiring painters moving to New York, Mr. Jenkins used the G.I. Bill to study at the Art Students League and soon met Jackson Pollock and befriended Mark Rothko. Early on he adopted a tactile, chance-driven method of painting that relied on almost every technique but rarely brushwork. Dribbling paint, Pollock-like, onto loose canvases, he allowed it to roll, pool and bleed, and he sometimes kneaded and hauled on the canvas — "as if it were a sail," he said once. His favorite tool for many years was an elegant ivory knife, which he used to guide the flow of paint.