Jerome Witkin is reluctant to call himself either an abstract or a figurative painter. His work is an active combination of many styles. For three years while at the Cooper Union Art School (1957-1960) Witkin was involved in large-scale, abstract "action painting" in which the emphasis on painterly technique and the expression of pure emotion demanded the elimination of subject matter. Since then Witkin has found the need to express social and emotional issues in a more definite, representational form. His work, however, is enlivened by vestiges of lessons learned from the abstract expressionists, particularly his energetic, spontaneous brushstroke. Witkin's paintings are charged with a certain robust energy and life.

A major preoccupation in Witkin's work is the portrayal of human personality and emotion. He prefers to work with models and subjects who have a flair for the dramatic, and his paintings and drawings record imaginative distortions and exaggerations of personality. Notice the grasping fingers, almost cut off by the frame, in the lower right side of The Act of Judith.

Witkin earned his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania after studying in Germany under a Pulitzer Fellowship and in Italy under a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was in Europe for a period of six years but felt the need to return to the "American experience" and to people with whom he shared common beliefs and attitudes. He is currently teaching studio arts at Syracuse University in New York.