Meet Jane Davies
This week, I’m sharing my conversation with Jane Davies. Take a listen here.
Jane Davies is a mixed media painter. She has been teaching and painting full time for just under 10 years, but her life as an artist has extended much farther. By the time she chose to focus on art full time, she’d written several books, been a designer, and a potter.
The thing that is striking about Jane is her absolute dedication to the practice itself. She knows that work begets work. She finds ways to always be challenging herself. She has no standard set of steps she works through for any individual painting. Instead, she sets up challenges for herself (a thirty minute painting, a 5 minute painting, a never ending painting) to pull herself into the work.
“The point isn’t to make beautiful pieces. The point is to get further than I would on the pieces if I didn’t have the rule to keep making marks.”
She’s also not fussy about materials. For her live workshops, yes, she asks that students invest in and bring a particular set of materials, but if someone is starting and worried about materials, she thinks that time could be better spent on using what you have and getting into the art making itself.
But don’t let that give the wrong impression. She loves materials, and she knows the materials she uses incredibly well. That depth of knowledge permits her to be fully present in the process, reacting to what is happening beneath her brush, pen, crayon or yes, even sparkle pen.
Take a listen to my interview with Jane Davies here.
