RWSW MEMBER

Janis Fry

My paintings explore the emotional power of colour and are mostly concerned with the mystical quality of the natural landscape and the Tree of Life.


I also paint portraits, mythology and still life. I am concerned with light and dark and things half seen and I am fascinated by the boundaries between things where one ends and another begins, by precise and indistinct edges, by merging, fading and emergence and by symbolism. An important motif of mine is portals and ways through between worlds and states of consciousness. I paint in watercolour, acrylic and oil.

 

I studied Theology and English at Bangor University where I fell in love with the landscape of Snowdonia and began painitng. I then studied at Swansea College of Art and set up studio for silk painting, fascinated by the intensity of colour achievable with French steam fixed dyes, a technique I studied in France. I won 3 Design Council Awards for work in this medium in the 1980s and represented Wales with Laura Ashley in an International Fashion show.

I also ran a pottery studio for 30 years until painting and writing took over.


My deep love of France and in particular Brittany, is a thread that runs throughout my life. For 10 years I ran Art holidays in Le Pouldu, Southern Brittany where Gauguin spent some of his most formative years.


As both artist and author, my love of the sacred yews, those brought to Britain from lands of and around the Holy Lands, by saints and other holy people, over the last 2,000 years and more, is one of the main subjects of my paintings, along with more recently, portraits and strongly coloured landscapes. Much of my work is involved with the mystical and the mythical and is evocative of sacred places and pre-Christian landscapes. The raw beauty of the landscape is conveyed in my painting through the emotional and spiritual power of colour and light and the drama of tonal contrasts, I am a visionary painter in that my paintings begin in my imagination, dreams or meditation.


ww.janisfry.co.uk   

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