Jenny Saville (born in Cambridge in 1970) is a contemporary English painter and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). She is known for her monumental images of women, usually using herself as the model; sometimes using others.

She gained her degree at Glasgow School of Art (1988-1992), and was then awarded a six month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where she states that she saw "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see because they had the physicality that I was interested in."

She studied at the Slade School Of Art 1992-1993. At the end of her postgraduate education at the Slade, the leading British art collector Charles Saatchi purchased her entire senior show and commissioned works for another two years. In 1994 she spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York.

Today, Saville works and lives in London and is a tutor of figure painting at the Slade School of Art.

Saville does not meet the usual public perception of the YBAs, as she has a dedication to the "traditional" art of oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings.

Since her debut in 1992, her focus has remained on the body. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. ('Saville' by Simon Schama, 2005)

Her painting Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) appeared on the cover of Manic Street Preachers' third album The Holy Bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Saville