Jane has been creating all her life.  She graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in art and art history and studied printmaking and photography at the Memphis College of Art under Murray Riss, Veda Reed, Dolph Smith, and Ted Faiers.  She pursued painting in oil several summers at the Chicago Art Institute and studied with Kate Manzo and the Michelangelo Project in Memphis, a studio recognized for sight-size realism.

Jane’s study of printmaking and photography led her early work to be mostly monochromatic. She later taught art for twenty-five years, including printmaking and AP Art, and it was during that period she became interested in color.  She self-taught in acrylics and began showing her art around Memphis. It wasn’t until Covid and retirement that she began painting in oil full time.  

She explains her style as Messy Realism.  In actuality, it is alla  prima, in which she abides by the painting daily philosophy.  Her photography and printmaking backgrounds are reflected in her tight compositions, and her adherence to off-the-frame composition is reminiscent of Gauguin and the Japanese influence on the Impressionists.  She strives for a realism that is expressive, showing her viewer her love for poetry and the natural world.

Jane is a member of the Arkansas Society of Printmakers, the Arkansas Artists’ Registry, the Memphis/Germantown Art League, Plein Air Memphis, Oil Painters of America, and the American Impressionists Society.

She has three grown daughters and six grandchildren.  She recently married her college sweetheart, adding four more grandchildren to her family.  She travels with her husband in their restored 1962 Airstream.

Jane lives in the Arkansas Delta near Memphis and Crowley’s Ridge.  Contact her at janevbw@gmail.com.