Since 1990 Lenz has painted portraits of Americans. Lenz won the grand prize in the 2006 inaugural Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition organized by the National Portrait Gallery. Lenz\'s winning entry was entitled Sam and the Perfect World.\n', '

The grandson of painter Nic Lenz, and the son of an art dealer, Lenz received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1985. In the spring of 1989, after four years in publishing and advertising as an art director, Lenz left commercial art to become a full-time fine artist. At first he painted landscapes based on his travels to northern Wisconsin and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. These early paintings were influenced greatly by Tom Uttech, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and by the luminous light quality of Hudson River School artists Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and Sanford Gifford.\n', '

After moving to the east side of Milwaukee, Lenz began to paint the neighborhoods and people of the central city. The city\'s children, mostly African-American, very quickly became the focus of his paintings. In these works, completed between about 1990 to 2000, the hope and vitality of the children\'s faces contrasts starkly with the worn down reused sidewalks, streets, and houses of the central city.\n', '

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