JANE LEWIS

artist

Jane Lewis is a much collected and highly respected artist. An individualist, very much a woman of our times, she quietly but obsessively produces work which is oblivious to fashion, trends or movements. Her art is unlike that of any other artist.

Winner of the prestigious Slade Prize, and later artist in residence with Kent Opera and a Henry Moore Fellow, Jane is an accomplished draughtswoman and printmaker, and is perhaps more talented still in pastel and in oil painting.

Her painting technique is influenced by the artists of the early Italian Renaissance and recent visits to Italy to study the Roman frescoes at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia have had a profound effect, realized in recent still life and figure compositions. The style and content, however, are very contemporary. Her work deals pictorially with the ambiguous and surreal, with the masks we all wear every day. There is often a sense of a story within, prompting questions of time, place, reason and sublety of sexuality. Pictures within pictures are a frequent motif.

While painting remains her first love, recently Jane has begun working in new, digital media. The images produced have qualities unique to digital art, and yet are still recognizable as being of her oeuvre. In 2006 the artist began publishing her computer generated images as original limited edition prints, available for sale from this website, and has received funding from Arts Council England to further develop work in the medium.

Jane's work has been used by Paladin Books, The Sciences, Faber and Faber, and most significantly Bloodaxe Books, who have used over 20 of her paintings as covers for their poetry publications. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the UK and also internationally, with paintings in a number of public, corporate and private collections.

Original works can be seen at Portal Gallery, 15 New Cavendish Street, London, W1G 9UB and Obsession Publishing UK has produced limited edition silkscreen prints of her work since 1994.

Jane Lewis is listed in "Who's Who in Art" Hilmarton Manor Press, "Dictionary of International Biography" Cambridge-Melrose Press, and "Cambridge Blue Book".