“I paint what delights me, what I encounter with my camera and in my daydreams. An indignant chick. A friend. A haunted place. An imaginary meeting. I paint what I’ve seen, and then go a little further, telling you about my experience with the subject, wishing you to share in it with me, trying to make you laugh or to remind you of a story we all know. Painting is a way of studying those moments, characters, and places that have moved me, of freezing time and looking at them directly and examining their parts. I am the painter, and I am also the viewer."
Jan learned to create the illusion of life in Emily Carr University’s film animation department, and has carried those tools into her current painting practice. A reflection of the world as she sees it, her work is often humorous, sometimes poignant, and almost always concerned with character.
Jan painted in Canada’s South Okanagan for 20 years before relocating to BC’s coastal mountains in 2019 and then to Vancouver Island in 2020. Her studio work tends to showcase the life around her on her small farm, encounters with friends, as well as interesting characters and spaces in the wild and in the news. As well as personal work, she does several portrait commissions a year.
In 2015, Jan’s paintings were featured on the popular blog The Jealous Curator. In 2017, Jan was awarded Penticton Art Council’s prize for top visual artist in the district. Later that year, one of her paintings was a finalist and awarded a juror’s prize at the Salt Spring National Art Prize. Also that year, Jan co-created a successful group studio space and art gallery in Penticton (Little Long Studios & Gallery, now The Long Gallery) which she went on to sell. Her work has been shown at galleries including Bau-Xi Gallery (Vancouver), Penticton Art Gallery, Tumbleweed Gallery (Penticton), The Gallery at the Jasper Park Lodge, and the Kelowna Art Gallery.
In addition to painting, Jan has toured BC as a belly dance performer, operated a small hobby farm with her partner, glass artist Redbeard, and worked as a picture framer, a gallerist, a book seller, and an assistant librarian.