Jenni Mitchell grew up in Eltham and has been actively involved in the region for most of her life. She was elected by the community as a Councilor for the Shire of Eltham and has been a leader in conservation and cultural issues within the region.

Beginning painting at the age of ten by taking private lessons from Leslie Sinclair at Montsalvat. She later graduated from Phillip Institute (RMIT) majoring in painting and print-making under Betty Churcher, Peter Booth and Brian Seidel. Further studies include a diploma of Professional Writing and Editing from NMIT and a Master of Visual Arts from Monash University .

During her twenties she traveled overseas working and studying art throughout Europe , Russian and the Isle of Man.

Always a traveler and seeker of wild places to paint and photograph, she has traveled extensively throughout the inland regions of Australia with frequent return field trips to the Flinders Ranges Lake Eyre and Tibooburra. The Wimmera and the Mallee region of Victoria have been visited frequently, with interests in the Little Desert, Mt. Araplies and again the flat horizon line and the shimmering wheat fields and silos. The Mt. Macedon bushfires of 1983 were the subject of another historical series of paintings, recording the destruction and regeneration of the bush over a number of years Contrasting the flat horizons and desert regions of the Australian Landscape has been her work along the Southern Australian coast along Port Campbell and the Coorong in South Australian.

More recently Jenni has been traveling to the polar regions working as an artist-in-residence aboard ice-breaker vessels. She has worked in the Antarctic and the High Arctic recording the polar land and seascape in paint, photography, video and the written word.

Her work is predominantly oil on canvas, with other areas working oil and pastel on rag paper, pastel on paper and gouache. Linocut and etching techniques are used in her printmaking works.

Alongside the landscape work she has been working on a series of ‘100 Australian Poets Portraits'. The portraits have bee painted from life over a number of sitting and include: A. D. Hope, Les, Murray, Judith Wright, Dorothy Porter, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Emma Lew, Geoffrey Dutton, Judith Rodriguez, Alex Skovron and Fay Zwicky.

During 1996 she was artist-in-residence at Riversdale & Bundanon, (Arthur Boyd's gift to the nation) on the Shoalhaven River NSW and was greatly inspired by the reflected light on the Shoalhaven river and the dry bush of the hills behind the property, focusing on the bush floor.

Recent exhibitions include: ‘To the Ice: Images from the Antarctic', Barn Gallery Montsalvat; ‘Fields Apart', Adam Galleries Melbourne, ‘Poets Portraits' at the La Trobe university. An exhibition of Australian Poets, ‘ Extraordinary People' Parliament House, Victoria; ‘Antarctic Paintings', New Parliament House, Canberra and Ice painting exhibitions at Hamilton Regional Gallery and Dickerson Gallery in Melbourne and ‘Desert, Ice and Poetry' at Montsalvat.