Jane Canfield

Jane started early in her artistic career working on lino blocks and attended drawing classes with David Newman-White in the evenings. Whilst art ran in her veins with her father being an international artist, Jane from an early age had always wanted to be a graphic designer. Her father supported her in pursing her fondness for design, all the while knowing that she had the raw talent to become an artist. It wasn't until he passed away that she started to take painting seriously. Working mainly in oils, Jane often explores the use of gouache, as painting en plein air is an important part of her process, taking her VW Kombi and dogs along for the ride. The palette in many of her works is paler and the patterns of nature more pronounced. “In my work, I try to reduce detail and use limited use of colour on my palette. I feel it is colour that is the dominant inspiration when I prepare for a painting.” – Jane Canfield The minted shades of green and grey in the painting “In the Valley (Lithgow)” by Jane Canfield encapsulates the stillness of a mountain winter and the sculptural presence within a terrain bare of trees. “My work practice seems to constantly evolve. I feel as an artist that we have to keep pushing ourselves and experimenting, following those elusive primal instincts of feeling that there is something in a work that I want to encourage and bring into my next pieces. It’s like a trail of breadcrumbs and it’s an exciting, butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach that you know that there is ’something there’ and there is nothing better than that feeling. I’ve heard other artists describe it as a discovery. The works in this collection span two years. All of them have new ‘discoveries’ in various forms and it's these discoveries that keep us working, always striving for the next.”