Jane Strother

I call myself a landscape painter although I diversify on occasion.

Field, in the context of ‘In the Field’ seemed an apt title for my last collection of paintings shown at the Sewell Gallery in October 2025. Although I don’t actually paint in the landscape I do much of my thinking, musing, identifying, construing connections, while being there.

Field also stands in for my interest in etymology and particularly, derivations for features in the geographical landscape. Mine is an emotional response, to the language and influences, cultural, historical, linguistic, which come together to make a word which so perfectly describes what I see. I want something of the language, the poetry, in my painting.

On another level, that of the physical making of a painting, integrity in the abstraction, a truth, a reason is important for me. I aim for a painting to interact with the subject in such a way that it is clear that it is not trying to translate the view. I incorporate traces of visual construction, just visible drawn lines embedded in layers, history made evident. I often use collage as a building material or tool, sometimes as a study, at other times retained in the making of a painting. It serves to ensure that desired objectivity, interacting with the emotion or subject which it represents.

My recent paintings are informed by time spent in Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex; Laugharne, Carmarthenshire; Allonby, Cumbria; Bamburgh, Northumberland; Wells-next-sea, Norfolk; Essex, Cornwall, Donegal.

Jane Strother March 2026