Jane is a contemporary multi-disciplinary artist. Her work is narrative-driven, sourced from an eclectic array of photographic and film imagery, metamorphosed and reimagined through the mediums of paint and archive film.   She places women, who have been and are, obscured, invisible and absent from history back in the frame posing questions about representation, the archive and who holds authority over truth. 

 

Jane’s recent paintings and films have focused on exploring women’s political experience of marriage or domestic partnerships through the semiotics of ‘veiling’.  Both the bridal ‘Veil’, with its specific ideas of feminine identity of beauty, purity and submission and the role of ‘make-up’ as a veil which women adopt as a tool to conform to a concept of ‘perfect’ femininity.

 

Her practice is not about the recovery of 'facts' but about searching out ways of telling alternative stories that rely on the traces of different historical data, putting the spotlight on the histories we are told and directing our attention to consider where power resides and who has agency.

 

In her painting decisions around medium and surface are determined by the aesthetic Jane wishes to achieve. They reference the language of film. Taking visual cues from historical eras, she stages each painting to create the Mis-en-scene; to make the invisible visible and to make clear where the thinking needs to be.  Frames range in scale from the small and intimate to the large and voyeuristic.  She paints in both oil and acrylic on Gesso Boards, canvas and other surfaces.