A Naturalist Approach: The Art Portfolio of Jan Pearson
her path, acrylic on wrapped canvas
Jan Pearson takes a naturalist approach to painting, rendering her subjects in a gestural, almost abstracted quality that suggests movement and ethereality. Growing up in rural Missouri, the artist has been inspired by nature, an inspiration that’s reflected in both her subject matter and style.
There’s a wonderful sense of movement in almost all of Jan’s paintings – though an image may be focused on a single figure or form, the viewer’s eye is still drawn across the canvas by the brush strokes that seem to fly off in definite directions, merging and separating throughout the image.
Jan's painting portfolio website, www.janaart.com
In many of her paintings, Jan utilizes a cohesive colour scheme that lends a sense of wholeness to the picture plane – a painting of a waterfall, for example, may be rendered almost exclusively in tones of blue, green, and teal. I also enjoy the moments where Jan experiments with a more intense contrast – several paintings in her Abstracts gallery take a heavier, darker, more textured approach to Jan’s gestural style of painting, creating a dramatic and intriguing mood, something like the work of David Ferguson.
