Jane Hunt | Dispatches from the Soul

Jane Hunt’s ethereal landscapes combine tonalism, impressionism, and romanticism

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

This story was featured in the June 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

The sun is setting over the Rocky Mountains as painter Jane Hunt heads home after a shopping trip to her local Costco. As her Toyota minivan reaches a scenic overlook on Highway 36, the city of Boulder pops into view in the distance. Mauve and tangerine streaks inflame the mostly gray sky. Hunt quickly pulls off the road, and as rush-hour traffic roars past her, the Colorado artist sketches furiously for 45 minutes. “I painted fast,” she says, “partially because the sunset was gone and partially because I didn’t want my frozen food to melt! Some of my favorite pieces are created frantically because it recalls the energy I felt at the time, which I can transfer in the studio.”

Indeed, once back in her Boulder studio, Hunt enlarged the study and christened the piece, appropriately, HEADED HOME. In this case, the studio painting was a replica of the on-location study. But more often, she takes inspiration from multiple plein-air studies to create a composite of scenes. For example, OCTOBER GOLD was inspired by a sketch depicting bright-yellow aspen trees in Steamboat Springs, CO. “But I didn’t have the light quite the way I wanted it on the trees, so I actually went into my yard and did some quick oil sketches of my own aspen trees at the right time of day,” she says.

Last month OCTOBER GOLD was on view at the Salmagundi Club’s annual members exhibition in New York City. This month another of Hunt’s evocative landscapes, LOOKING WEST, is on display at Utah’s Illume Gallery in the prestigious Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition.

Paintings like these reveal Hunt’s style and aesthetic sensibility. She is a self-described tonal impressionist—tonal because she works from a strong value plan, and impressionistic because broken color is also a signature element in her oeuvre. She adds that she also views romanticism as an influence on her work. “Romanticism is the poetic side of things,” she says.

Although Hunt is modest about her growing list of accolades, she does seem particularly honored that last year she won five top awards in OPA’s national, regional, and online shows. What she doesn’t mention is that those honors set a record for the most OPA awards given to an artist in one year. But Mary Williams, owner of Mary Williams Fine Arts in Boulder, which represents the artist, makes it clear: “Jane is on fire!” Williams says. “Her landscapes glow with a feeling of spirituality. They possess a soulfulness and luminosity that don’t come around too often.”

Hunt was born in Derbyshire, England, and grew up in London. From an early age, she drew constantly, and she knew as a child that her destiny was forever linked to art. Her parents shared her passion, and the family made regular trips to the great museums of London and Paris—in particular, she was fortunate to have lived just a few miles from the Tate Gallery (now called Tate Britain).

The Tate Britain is home to the world’s largest collection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner [1775-1851], a landscape artist known for his expressive and sometimes tumultuous scenes. “I don’t remember a time that art and Turner were not a part of my life,” Hunt says. “My parents took me to museums when I was still in a stroller, and as I grew older, I chose to spend more and more time at the Tate.”

Although her early life was filled with sublime art, she was frequently uprooted due to her father’s job as an engineer; the family moved back and forth from England to the U.S. three times. The moves were disquieting, and for Hunt the perpetual motion created a sense of homesickness. “This yearning for home creates a sense of home in my work,” Hunt says. “If I can offer my viewers a connectedness through the landscapes I paint, I have done my job.”

The artist finished high school in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Art to study medical illustration. But she soon switched to just illustration, graduating in 1993 with a degree in fine arts. For several years she worked in Cleveland as a freelance illustrator. Then, in 1996, she moved west to Boulder to study art therapy at Naropa University. The graduate school stint didn’t last long, though. “I ran out of money,” Hunt says.

Still, she never stopped working toward fine art. For more than 20 years now she has pursued a fine-art career, albeit with some major interruptions. About 15 years ago, when her career was in full swing with gallery representation and shows, Hunt traveled with her husband to China to adopt a child. The couple’s life took a dramatic turn when, once back home in Boulder, their daughter was diagnosed with more than two dozen medical issues, including cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The challenges of her daughter’s frequent seizures and other health issues took its toll on the artist. For testing, surgeries, and therapies she traveled back and forth to Children’s Hospital in Denver for several years. Often worried about her daughter, Hunt stopped painting for three years during this stressful time as she also struggled with her own severe anxiety.

Eventually her husband convinced her to return to the easel, and in 2008 she began painting outdoors regularly, leaving behind the abstracted figurative works she’d focused on in the past. Plein-air painting fit in well with her daughter’s frequent hospital visits. And Hunt discovered that painting amid wildflowers, creeks, and trails healed her soul and restored her spirit. “Painting outdoors leads to a feeling of being connected to the divine and keeps life in perspective,” Hunt says. “My anxiety is mostly under control, and I now know that painting is the most healing thing I can give to myself and others. I want viewers to feel as if they can go inside my paintings and relax.”

These days each Hunt painting has a story to tell—not necessarily a sweeping saga but rather a novella, depicting just a slice of nature’s bounty as seen through the artist’s creative eye. Her paintings portray golden aspens in the Rocky Mountains, crashing waves from the shores of Laguna Beach, CA, and a ranch covered in a blanket of snow in Taos, NM, among other scenes. But they are less about specific locales and more about the emotions Hunt feels while experiencing the landscape. She is quick to emphasize that she must feel an emotional connection to her subject before she even picks up a brush—and, she adds, “I’m not likely to feel an emotion when I look at a tractor.”

From a distance, the artist’s landscapes convey a dreamy, almost otherworldly quality. But step closer, and the scenes reveal a swirl of chaos reminiscent of Turner. The viewer sees Hunt’s hand in the edgy textures she creates by scraping and gouging the paint with a palette knife. Tranquil from a distance, tumultuous up close—“it’s like life,” Hunt says.

Today travel is a major part of the artist’s schedule. Her daughter is now 15 years old, her seizures have mostly subsided, and the family has adjusted to the ups and downs of life. This year Hunt journeys to Texas and Utah to participate in shows, and she also feels fortunate to travel to Florida, Hawaii, and California to depict her favorite subject matter in the U.S., the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. “I find it a wonderful challenge, and spending the day on the beach is a pretty sweet gig,” she says.

As this story was going to press, Hunt was on her way to teach a workshop in Provence, France, as well as scout locations for her 2021 workshop at Monet’s gardens in Giverny. What’s the most important advice she offers students in her workshops? “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” Hunt says.

Her style and subject matter have evolved from the early days of her career, but J.M.W. Turner remains a strong influence, in part because he conveys “a sense of the ethereal while packing a powerful punch. His work speaks to something much larger than us,” Hunt says. “It’s the same feeling that I am trying to create in my own work. It’s not about a particular doctrine, but it’s simply about the connecting belief that there is something more to life than our own individual experience.”

representation
Mary Williams Fine Arts, Boulder, CO; The Mission Gallery, St. George, UT; Abend Gallery, Denver, CO; Turner Fine Art, Jackson, WY; Lilford Gallery, Kent, England.

This story was featured in the June 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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