In one way or another, all artists make choices about subject matter. Our subjects define our work as much as our style, approach or materials.
UK watercolorist Jane Tomlinson, who was trained in printmaking and paperworks but is self-taught as a painter, paints sunflowers, animals, scenes from her travels abroad, and scenes of “Earth Magic” such as Stonehenge and other stone circles, earthen mounds and locations of spiritual or ritual significance to ancient cultures in the British Isles.
What drew me to her work, however, are her “pebbles”, careful and straightforward observations of river stones, worn smooth by water and time and revealed in their differences of hue and texture by warm sunlight.
In addition to the galleries of her work, her site includes a Journal, which occasionally features step-by-step walk-throughs of her painting process.
Her galleries are divided by subject matter, including a Sketchbook with travel sketches from her apparently extensive travels, and the Pebbles, which is one of the more extensive gallery sections.
Carefully arranged so that their surfaces and shadows overlap and interact, Tomlinson’s pebbles form compositions that are essentially landscape still-lifes, making a fascinating intersection of two different, and usually quite separate, kinds of artistic subjects.
