Jane Hunt, Looking West, oil, 24 x 18.
Jane Hunt’s award-winning LOOKING WEST is a personal favorite—an impressionistic ode to universality and emotional connection. Hunt’s fondness for captivating skyscapes is deeply tied to her past. The English native, who moved cross-Atlantic three times when she was younger, experienced an underlying sense of homesickness. Fortunately, she found comfort in the realization that the sky “connects” the lands. “I try to keep the land in my paintings as universal as I can, bridging it with the sky, to create a sense of home and to reach people where they are,” she says.
The land in LOOKING WEST is actually an amalgam of late summer and early fall plein-air studies of Colorado, the Boulder, CO, artist says, but that doesn’t matter. What does is Hunt’s heartfelt intent that her paintings “be restful, calm, and peaceful, even though life isn’t always like that,” says the distinguished signature member of Oil Painters of America. “If you look carefully, you’ll see a lot of chaos within the painting, particularly in the clouds. I wanted to create a contrast between the rough, almost chaotic texture and the very idyllic scene. I find that juxtaposition to be really interesting.”
Hunt, who teaches both online and in-person workshops, is a master at leading the viewer on an emotionally immersive journey. “In this painting, the clouds are angled to direct the eye to the light, then down toward the land, and then around and back up into the clouds,” she says. And that sunset illumination that permeates the serene scene? “The key is to keep everything [else] grayed down and dark, so the area of light really glows.”
Find Hunt’s work at Abend Gallery, Denver, CO; Illume Gallery of Fine Art, St. George, UT; Lilford Gallery, York, England; Mary Williams Fine Arts, Boulder, CO; Turner Fine Art, Jackson, WY; Wild Horse Gallery, Steamboat Springs, CO; and www.janehuntart.com. —Beth Williams
This story appeared in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.