"I have had a fascination, maybe an obsession, with water for as long as I remember. I prefer to be in it, if not in than on and failing that let me stare at it. Watching my childhood sand castles fall to the continued impertinent rolling in of waves and tide captivated me."
Jane has shown work in Lincoln Center, Times Square, the Louvre, Museum of Computer Art, Mint Museum, Cameron Museum of Art, Fayetteville Museum of Art, World Festival of Art on Paper (Slovenia). Jane grew up sailing on the coast of Texas. She studied art at High School for Performing and Visual Arts (Houston, TX), California Institute of Art (Valencia, CA) and the Alfred G. Glassel Museum School (Houston, TX).
Jane has won competitions at both local and international levels. She has been published and her print of “We the People,” her 911 tribute, lives in the US Library of Congress. Most recently Jane completed a commission for a new commercial building that is 7' x 7'!
“Being a creative requires being somewhat fearless. Unafraid to make something new and so different no one understands what it is.” Jane was taught by John Mandel and influenced by Douglas Huebler and John Baldessari, all at Cal Arts, to never repeat what has been done, to do new art. Arthur Turner at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, taught her to try multiple mediums, to keep the creative ideas flowing.
Her new studio is in Stuart, Florida. Primarily a painter, Jane also likes to use a varied mixture of pencil, charcoal, acrylics, latex, glazes, inks, watercolor and digital.
She is a licensed boat captain and lived on a boat with her husband and their dog. They have settled in Stuart where Jane now maintains a beautiful art studio. She has a profound respect for water. She watches how the water moves, how it sculpts shorelines as well as deposits sand or takes it away.
“Mixed media artist, Jane Lawton Baldridge has a comprehensive body of work belonging conceptually and contextually to five series: 'Tides & Currents', 'Revolution', 'Reflections', 'Sail Away' and 'Erosion & Alchemy'. Her works featured here are from the latter series and reflect upon her love and respect for water. Naturally, the predominant color in these abstract works is blue, connecting the artist’s practice with an extensive legacy of artworks from antiquity to post-modernity.
Jane's works are full of life. Masterfully combined hues make up fluid compositions which like water carry the viewer's eye in a back and forth, wave-like motion across the corners of the canvas. The works have a painterly quality adding a calming effect and indeed, gazing at each canvas brings up a similar feeling of fixedly looking at the ocean which is also Jane's main inspiration.
Although her images supply the viewer with an abstract backdrop for resting their relaxing thoughts on, Jane's pieces are also an engaging attempt to bring to mind environmental issues and our species' non-reciprocal attitude towards the life-giving element of water. In her own words, "As sea levels rise and powerful storms erode the landscape, lack of moral compass erodes society." In this sense, the works in Jane Lawton Baldridge's 'Erosion & Alchemy' series can be seen as a visual metaphor for the decadent course humans have taken; far from - if not against - our own nature and our neglected responsibility toward this ecosystem which has nourished our existence.
Jane's works are rich in texture, with a winding, vibrant rhythm and reveal a remarkable talent for unapologetically blending color as well as balancing shapes in dynamic, powerful compositions that are perfectly captivating for purely aesthetic reasons, relative or not to the intended message behind them.” - Circle Foundation for the Arts, Director
Thank you for the lovely review! I just saw it, what a nice thing for a Monday morning!
I have loved Jane’s work from the first time I saw it. The fluid design and the marvelous colors result in a fascinating combination of design. Gazing at her work is calming and meditative. And, I also love the ocean.
Thank you so much Laura Kay!