A face familiar to many Oklahomans, artist Jaime Lynn Henderson is now on her way to becoming familiar to a much larger audience.

Henderson is one of 14 up-and-coming artists competing on Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist," which airs at 9 p.m. Wednesdays.

The show, which was filmed last fall, pits the artists against each other in various challenges, whittling them down week-by-week to the last artist standing, who will win a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum and a cash prize of $100,000.

Henderson spent most of her teen years living in Lawton and graduated from University of Oklahoma with an undergraduate degree in 2007. From there, she moved to Chicago and received a master's degree in painting and drawing from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The limelight of a reality TV show may not be where Henderson expected her art career to take her, but she said she feels well-suited to the venture.

"Really, my ultimate goal is just to be able to support myself solely off my creative endeavors in whatever way that manifests," she said. "Being on a reality (series) is certainly one of those ways, but it's just one of many. If, along the way, I get to dress up and wear red lipstick and smile for the camera, I'm not going to complain too much."

In fact, the notions of Hollywood glitz and glamour are quite close to Henderson's heart. She loves to dress up in vintage Hollywood fashions, and her whimsical paintings reveal her fascination with fame, fortune and fantasy.

"I live vicariously through a cast of female characters in all of my paintings that I jokingly call 'my girls,'" Henderson said. "They get to do all kinds of fun things. They can be catty, they can be rude, they can be selfish, and all the things that in life we're taught not to be and we don't want to be described as, but I kind of let them do it, and I sort of live through them."

In her artist bio, she states: "Mine is an atmosphere filled with cocktail parties, jewelry trees, romance, forest clearings, evening gowns, morality, animals, drama, beauty, and a oneness with God. Yes, all at the same time."

"Work of Art" is a unique combination of the high-brow world of art appreciation and the low-brow world of reality television, a combination Henderson said offers a little something for everybody.

China Chow is the show's host, and judges Bill Powers, a New York gallery owner, Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for New York Magazine, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, gallerist at Salon94 gallery in New York City, will determine who makes the cut and who is not "The Next Great Artist."

To learn more about Henderson and to see her paintings, go online to her website, www.jaimelynnhenderson.com.

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