Artist`s Statement

My work is inspired by the rich variety of my surroundings and travels further afield. I create celebratory, vibrant `mixed media` images of land, home and garden-scapes, places that are alive in me and connect me with life. These places are deep and ever present, they are drawn from my experience and enable me to use my art as expression and escape and pure joy. The colour and decorative content is intuitive and I love the process of manipulating the colours upon the surface. The mark-making, drawing and exploration of shapes whilst mixing the media offers less structured and melodic compositions. The imagined forms the poetry of the image. I like the experience of change and use reality and memory to create the sequence through to the mark-making. Layers of colour and texture become gorgeous new surfaces to explore, whilst forming unique, individual spaces that sparkle and reverberate. My final composition is always influenced by my reaction to the colours as they are applied, whether subtle,intense,exuberant or gentle.

This work presents an essence of place, a sensuous enchantment, somewhere familiar I have been, or a moment in time I treasure. Latterly a return to printmaking has been another focus, measuring the quality of line and shimmering depths of colour on the plate, which can then be embellished with the painterly qualities from my mixed media images.

Jan Gardner 2008

Jan Gardner
Known Places

My first impressions of Jan Gardner's work are of its distinctive palette. She celebrates richness and exuberance. Her enthusiastic use of colour and rejoicing in pattern belie a depth and emotiveness in her subject matter that encourages us to look beyond the surface of the work. Like the landscape itself her paintings and prints unfold new layers that encourage us to enter the world she presents us with. She is really connected with her subject matter.

These are known places, visited many times and drawn repeatedly, sat in, walked through, truly experienced. The places we see are beyond being "real" and are as much about memory as observation. There is integrity to it; pieces may take many weeks to complete, as the layers of experience are built up. When she works she is transported into these places, relives an experience that we can share with her and experience for ourselves in a completely different way. To really appreciate this work you need to spend time with it, look and look again.

Steffan Jones-Hughes © 2006

Jan Gardner
Colours of the Ether

Jan Gardner was born and brought up in North Wales and spent much of her early years wandering the lanes and hills around her home. It was here that the light, space and colours that inhabit her work first became an influence. Drawing on these memories and experiences of special places and her later travels in Europe, Morocco and the U.S.A.; she crafts vivid and atmospheric works. Colours that fly in from emotion and passion, relaying a deep connection with the varied, differing landscapes from which they evolve.

The absolute joy and life affirming quality of her work is gleaned from her desire to look further, texture,mark-making and layering becomes apparent, a legacy from her time spent at Winchester School of Art. One of the most noticeable aspects of Jan`s work is her use of rich, magical colours, subtle nuances with the range of water-based media, something that has pre-occupied her for many years, linking the response to pure colours and the spiritual. In 2007 Jan was awarded an Arts Council of Wales research grant which enabled her to explore the source of her palette and the ancient and contemporary manufacture of pure pigment in Milan, New York and Geneva.

Jan continues to share her knowledge and enthusiasm with a wide audience via her exhilarating workshops and residencies. Celebrating the achievement and discovery individuals` can attain at any point in their lives is a dual joy alongside creating her own unique art-works.

“Art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see”   Paul Klee

S.R.Poole © 2011

Collectors` quotes

“Wonderfully experimental - imaginative - beautiful textures and colour”

“Fabulous colour, to lift the soul”

“Fantastic, love my picture, many thanks”

“Inspirational indeed! Ticked all the boxes, use of colour is spectacular”

“Jan shows us the magic in what we see everyday”

“Would like to take them all home with me!”

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(last edited 6 February 2012)