Award-winning artist Jane Penfield is drawn to nature, as well as to the human influence on it. She is especially attracted to elements that evoke light, drama, and emotion. Her work is an impression of light and life as she has experienced it through walking, travel, and direct observation.
Jane holds a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s degree from the Hartt School of the University of Hartford. She was profoundly inspired by the beautiful New England landscape of the Pioneer Valley, a place that nourished her intellectually and creatively, helped form her values, and started her on her artistic path.
Jane has worked professionally as a choral director and administrator of nonprofit arts organizations, in addition to being a visual artist. She currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of Arts Center East. Now able to focus primarily on pastel and oil painting, she finds great joy in the creative process and in teaching. She says, “Like meeting a long-lost relative, I recognize the same elements familiar to me in music: composition, form, tonality, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and dynamics. Good habits of study and practice are essential. Painting, like conducting a choir, involves starting from scratch, observing, identifying problems, fixing them, and always trying to make it better, in order to create and present something beautiful in the end.”