Jan Blencowe

Jan Blencowe recieved her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Caldwell College, Caldwell New Jersey in 1984. During those years summer trips to the artists colony on Monhegan Island in Maine galvanized in her a distinct love for outdoor landscape painting known as painting "en plein air", a French phrase meaning "in the open air".

After moving to Connecticut and raising her children the beauty and diversity of the coastal Connecticut landscape became the focus of her work fuelled by her love of nature and desire for wild places and spaces to be preserved. Jan's primary medium is oils, and occassionally pastels.

Recent awards include two of her plein air landscapes being chosen to represent the state of Connecticut in Paint Americas Top 100 Landscape competition, that collection will be touring the USA during 2007, and an honorable mention at the prestigeous Renaissance in Pastel Show held at the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich Connecticut.

Jan is a signature member of The Society of American Landscape Painters, and a member of the American Impressionist Society and the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society. Her work is represented by several leading galleries in Connecticut, and is in numerous private collections in the northeast. Jan is also part of the "Daily Painters" movement, her daily paintings can be seen at www.paintingadayproject.blogspot.com. Her "painting a day" project has been written about in Domino Magazine, USA Weekend , the New York Times, the Washington Post Express and at Mastercard's blog Priceless.com.

Artists Statement:

I love being outdoors and so painting outdoors "en plein air' is a natural for me. There's a special something, a raw truthfulness and energy that infuses a work created through a direct encounter with the subject. Working out doors requires one to work quickly and with confidence. Every brushstroke must be meaningful. The sun will have moved across the sky far enough in just two hours to significantly change light and color. My work is usually done "alla prima" a painter's term from an Italian phrase which loosely translated means "all at the first" or "all at once". So my works, even the larger plein air pieces I'm beginniing to do, are painted in one session. It is also my hope that my paintings of the landscape will help remind people that our wild open spaces are vital to our existence and are worthy of our care and preservation.

Jan's Blog


Technorati Tags art, blog, artist, paintings