Jenny deFouw Geuder is an artist and educator who holds both a Bachelor’s and a
Master’s degree in Art Education. A middle-school art teacher for 19 years, Jenny
has always loved spending time outdoors and creating art in her home studio. Her love of nature, gardening, and hiking led her to birding—and soon enough to sketching the subjects she discovered outside. She acquired a bird feeder and was charmed by its many visitors. In no time, that one bird feeder grew to two, four, and now about eight—along with multiple bird baths! As Jenny immersed herself in bird-watching, she began to fine-tune her garden by introducing native plants that benefited birds and other wildlife.
Jenny then began to paint her backyard finds—everything from leaves and flowers to
birds—and it became one of her favorite pastimes. She found herself constantly
learning more about the subjects of her paintings, and she recorded her notes and
observations, leading naturally to the publication of her first book Drawn to Birds: A
Naturalist’s Sketchbook which won the National Book Award for Artistic Design in 2023. She has since published a children’s book titled Nature Explorer in 2023 and most recently a collaboration with poet Maya Zeller called The Wonder of Mushrooms (fall 2025).
Jenny’s skills and specialties include creating art with watercolors, oils, colored pencils, graphite, charcoal, and even ceramic sculpture. She lives in the Michigan countryside with her husband, two small boys, a dog, five cats, a hedgehog, chickens, and occasionally two ponies. Jenny spends most of her summers at a rustic log cabin on a lake in northern Michigan, where she enjoys hiking and fishing amid the natural beauty of the area.