Jane Rushton

FROM DARK INTO LIGHT

This recent series of paintings represent a journey from the deep darkness of loss towards the crack of light on the horizon that might suggest a future.

Built up from a ground of black gesso, and worked gesturally, the paintings embody a metaphorical struggle in the search for meaning and, ultimately, offer a sense of optimism.

The paintings in this series respond to the light and atmospheric conditions experienced from my studio on the shore of Loch Nevis. The title, Lost Horizons, refers to those conditions where the sea and the sky and the land merge together and their boundaries become elusive.

I am drawn to exploring the point where ‘this’ becomes ‘that’, and the closer one looks the harder it is to define that point. Within all of these paintings there is the suggestion of a horizon giving compositional structure, but those horizons are ill-defined, or lost.

There is never a clear vision at the start, of how a painting will look at completion. Instead the painting will emerge out of process itself, rather than through planned application.

Like the ever-changing weather and light over the loch, the work develops through a slow, iterative process of adding layer upon layer of paint, sometimes in broad gestural strokes, sometimes in ordered horizontal bands. Each successive layer will suggest what should come next.

These paintings require to be looked at slowly, in the same way one would take in the landscape. By giving time, elements come into view gradually, nuances and relationships emerge quietly and slowly.

Paintings in this series cost between £500 and £3500

Please contact me for details.

While working in the landscape in and around Ilulissat Kangia and Eqip Sermia, on Greenland’s west coast, I was drawn to the complex relationships between the seemingly permanent geological elements of nature and the more transient elements like ice, water and the lichen flora.

The detail and complexity of these relationships was profoundly moving, and became the focus of this body of work. For these pieces, I have also drawn on my love of maps and cartography, often incorporating hand traced or drawn maps as a layer within the work.

These are densely layered mixed media works that shift between the micro and the macro and, occasionally, display both at the same time.

As with all my work, these pieces reveal themselves more fully with long, slow, looking

Original artworks available for between £450 and £900

Sizes shown are for the work itself and do not include mount and frame

Prints can be made available for some of these pieces. Please contact for details.

Arctic Dialogues involved a field period in February 2009 in Spitzbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago (78° 13’ N) before the Polar sunrise, with a small group of Atmospheric Scientists. The work in this album draws on our shared activities, both out in the field and in the laboratory.

The focus of the scientific work was to investigate the behaviour of chemical pollutants in the snowpack following their transport from afar. My focus was on how the location, and the specific methods and processes of the scientists could inform my creative outcomes.

One of the by-products of the scientists lab work was a collection of filter papers from the filtration of melted snow samples. Although waste to the scientists, these papers provided me with a specific and meaningful focus. This became particularly apparent after looking at them under magnification, whereby the deposited material took on a fascinating appearance. The surfaces resembled complex topographies, suggestive of valleys, river systems, peaks and troughs.

Drawing on these visual cues, there followed a series of experiments exploring the notions of deposition, surface and texture, using a variety of graphic media on different grounds and, almost exclusively, at a very small scale.

The choice of materials, ground, and scale make reference to the subject matter, location, and concept.

There is a small catalogue (22 pages) that goes along with this body of work ‘Arctic Dialogues: Conversations between Art and Science’, which can be purchased by emailing me. The price is £6.50 including p&p

For several years I have been quietly getting to know the tiny beach in front of my studio, but during the strange time of Coronavirus lockdowns it has become my all-encompassing muse. I sit, walk, touch, listen, smell, and breath the shoreline. I have become even more keenly aware of the coming and going of the tide, and the conditions and species that exist within this small area.

The work in this collection represents a journey of discovery into those tenuous and tentative relationships that are ongoing in the intertidal zone. They are, of course, a metaphor for life itself, as they reflect on interconnection, resilience, adaptability, change, accommodation, symbiosis, etc. etc. …

The process involves the layering and collaging of image transfers from my photos of the shoreline, with watercolour, and acrylic paint. Built up intuitively, the surfaces are weathered, eroded, and transformed like the shoreline itself, after a retreating tide.

The prices of these works vary between £200 and £500. Please contact me for details.

To travel on foot for a lengthy period, carrying all one needs for survival, seeing no one but a single companion, enables a complete immersion in a landscape. In so doing, in the raw and remote landscape of Western Greenland, (first in 2000, and again in 2006) the subtleties and nuances of colour, texture, sound, movement and smell invade ones sensibilities, and grow in proportion.

To have as one 's companion and collaborator a geologist with many years experience of that particular landscape, whose knowledge and experience extends beyond the geological into the botanical, is a gift. Questions, conversations, observations, and explanations played a significant part in the development of Greenland: Proximity & Distance.

The works adopt techniques of paint, graphic media and digital print media, and aim to bring to light something of the less tangible elements of experience and landscape; the sense of immense space and light: the interrelated existences of rock and tundra vegetation: the complexity of colour and movement of ice, in a way that allows for a contemplative encounter.

Prices of works in this collection range between £350 for small works on paper to £3000 for the largest painting.