Jane with her digital collage 'Skying' at 'Borders' exhibition
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"I often paint with acrylics, but also I make hanging mobiles using laser-cut shapes of flying people and use my own photographs for digital collages. Now I am reconsidering my work in the light of the Earth's climate crisis. With the support of the local branch of Friends of the Earth I am curating a show with local artists about what is happening.
For 15 years most of my work has been about flying. My uncle, a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire pilot in WW2, gave me his flying logbook and started my interest.
Learning to fly a glider taught me about the sky, the wind, the clouds, air pressure and thermalling. I have been trying to express these air movements in paint and use the perspective of looking down to Earth from above.
A major project I am working on now is communicating the thin blue line of our atmosphere. Only 10 miles up includes all our weather and in only 100 miles up our sky changes from blue to black and officially outer space starts."
Jane was brought up in Harewood, Yorkshire. She studied at Hornsey College of Art and in Manchester. She now lives in west London and has also exhibited in Beijing, Spain, Italy and Belgium, and had residencies in Hackney, Aldeburgh and New York.
Her latest solo exhibitions were at Greenham Common in 2022 and at the Cowper & Newton Museum in Olney in 2021. She often exhibits with RAG (the Riverside Artists Group) in west London and Bad Behaviour in Brixton.
Jane's uncle Squadron Leader Charles Harris St John copyright IWM