Jane Askey

Walking is an important part of my thought process, it helps me think more clearly, form ideas and discover new subject matter. Sometimes the simplest everyday view can provide an exciting new beginning for a painting. Drawing on location helps me to record these initial thoughts and observations. Working outside over the years has helped me to inject more energy and spontaneity into my mark making.

I particularly enjoy views from an elevated vantage point or an unusual angle. The architecture of towns and harbours has recently inspired new paintings. In drawing and painting the interlocking shapes and colours of houses, boats and other architectural details it feels like I am solving a visual puzzle with a different and surprising solution with each painting.

Not quite knowing the outcome of each new piece is the spur that drives me to create. I feel an excitement at the beginning of a new painting, there is an urgency to start and see where the painting process of observing, experimenting and interpreting takes me. The process also involves questioning whether I have communicated the feeling of a place or thing and I work away until I find it through the handling of the media.

Jane Askey graduated from Manchester Polytechnic thirty-one years ago with a degree in Printed Textiles and subsequently worked as a freelance textile designer. She taught and inspired university students for thirty years, combining this with a career in painting. Jane’s original paintings have been exhibited in galleries throughout the UK and her paintings have also been licensed worldwide. Clients include The National Trust, Woodmansterne Publications, Paperchase, The Art Group, Phoenix Trading, Clare Maddicott Publications, Abacus, Cancer Research, The Robertson Collection and John Lewis.

Based in Scotland, with a studio that looks across the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh, Jane travels widely and sketches on location, experimenting with drawing and painting using mixed media in response to the landscape, the coast and architecture. Her background in textile design is evident in her approach to organising composition, colour and texture. She often works en plein air and this is reflected in her approach to handling paint, exploring the physical quality of the medium, allowing the gestural brush marks to suggest where land and sea meet with an emphasis on exploring colour, texture and light to evoke the character and mood of a specific place. Back in the studio she works on a range of surfaces referencing sketchbooks, photographs and memory.