Jane Flowers

I’m currently working in three main palettes - inland reds, ocean blues, and the pearlescent white on white sheen of early morning or late afternoon sunlight on water.  But I also like to keep abreast of current interior design trends – the amazing new shades and subtle variance of dirty greens, metallic blues, land based neutrals, intense blue blacks and vibrant earth reds in particular that have evolved in a huge way over the last ten years – and incorporate them into my work.

I love sailing and diving and have been looking at the ocean since a young child so seascapes are favourite subject matter but I also love panoramas, the great outdoors and particularly an aerial perspective.

Being ‘in the landscape’ is all-important. I can’t paint what I haven’t seen, smelt or sensed on my skin... I travel a lot, filling sketchbooks and taking countless photos and expanding my mind’s visual vocabulary as reference for my oils on canvas created back at the studio.

I work in quite large oils on canvas - I like my paintings to have an impact - through size, simplified design which extrapolates the forms of my subject matter, and enhanced, exaggerated colour.  A strong sense of the horizon is often a major element in my work.

I love the depth of colour you can achieve with oils and I work in layers – a first textural layer is worked on with subsequent layers of glaze and /or layers of impasto on the previous textural layers. So I’m usually working on about ten pieces consecutively as various layers dry.

We have some strong contemporary landscape artists in Australia, and it’s an inspiration to continue the tradition.