In this illuminating and inspirational interview, Jane Hunter takes us through her journey as an artist, her influences and process, as well as her advice for emerging new artists.
Summary
Jane Hunter describes herself as "the classic art kid," growing up in a creative household where art was embedded in everyday life. She recalls being surrounded by artistic objects like Mondrian-patterned glasses and Mackintosh-themed furniture, which taught her that functional items could also be beautiful and expressive.
Art remained her main academic interest throughout school, but after starting a foundation year, she experienced a "crisis of confidence" about art as a viable career. She abandoned her studies and worked for Glasgow City Council for 12 years, suppressing her creative urges from age 20 to 30 while raising her family.
At age 30, encouraged by her partner Sam, Jane took a redundancy opportunity to pursue art professionally. Self-taught beyond her early education, she successfully established an art career using her life experiences to inform her work.
Her artistic influences include Helen Frankenthaler's soft stain techniques, which informed her own process with inks, and the St. Ives movement artists, particularly Barbara Hepworth. She appreciates simplicity, restraint in color palette, and distilled expression in artwork.
Jane's work explores themes of connection and belonging to place. Having often felt like an outsider, she found an unexpected sense of home after moving to the Isle of Bute. Light is a significant element in her work, particularly important through Scottish winters, which she incorporates through negative space and transparent washes.
Originally working with textile art, creating geological maps from Harris Tweed, she transitioned to ink as her primary medium when the textile work became physically demanding. Her process begins with experiences in nature, followed by extensive preparation before working on multiple canvases simultaneously, building layers with drying time between.
Jane believes art shouldn't be "frozen in time" or kept at a distance but integrated into everyday life. She views her paintings as objects rather than just two-dimensional images and emphasizes that artists should actively engage with the world to find inspiration.
Transcript
I guess you could say I was probably the classic kind of art kid, drawing and making things or making whatever was on offer that week. So, always creative, it was always part of my life from a young age.
I grew up in quite a creative household in terms of my parents and art and music, but always sitting in it, so it's something that was a big part of my whole life. I feel like it's something that I really enjoyed. I was surrounded by a lot of art and music growing up. Things like, my mom would have glasses in our house with Mondrian patterns, or the art on the walls or the furniture had a Mackintosh theme. What I understood was that functional items could also be beautiful and I was interested in how that worked in terms of expressing yourself.
I found that creating and making art was something that I enjoyed, but also something that allowed me to express who I was. I remember one of my birthdays I was really excited to ask for an easel and proper paints and canvases and things like that, to be able to set up in my room and actually paint and make something that expressed what I was interested in. I found it really exciting when I was young.
That developed right through into my school career to the point where in high school art was my main interest academically. I enjoyed science subjects and English and things like that, but art was always number one, right through until my last years of high school. There was quite a large gap between school and art coming back into my life. I'd done art right up until the end of high school and I started my foundation year, and halfway through it had a bit of a crisis of confidence. I couldn't quite pin down what I was going to do with art as a job. At that point in your life people are telling you, asking you what your job's going to be, and being an artist isn't necessarily something you're told is a job that you can do that's acceptable.
So I ended up not completing my foundation year and I got a proper job instead. I actually worked for Glasgow City Council for twelve years. I had my family in that time and kind of didn't make anything other than creative projects with my kids, but I didn't feel any creative urges within myself for that whole time from the age of twenty until thirty—a decade of suppressing it, until my partner Sam encouraged me out of that to really pursue what I felt I should pick up. When you have a creative outlet, it's not something you can suppress for very long.
So at the age of thirty, I decided to take the opportunity through my job to have a redundancy, and that gave me some time to pursue my art career on my own. Obviously I'm self-taught; I'd had an education up until the age of nineteen, and I see the experience of life in those ten years as having set me up and educated me in a different way. I have experiences to talk about in that art. So it was at the age of thirty that I thankfully successfully began an art career.
My influences art-wise in terms of art movements and artists that I feel inspired by—because I didn't go to art school and haven't done a huge amount of studying in the history of art and different movements, it's all really through reading by interest, looking up books and investigating different artists. I've found some really interesting artists that I've come back to through the different stages of my process.
Helen Frankenthaler, in terms of her process of soft stain techniques that she, I think, is given the title of having invented, really led me into investigating how materials can be used in different ways and led me to the current process that I use in terms of the inks and how they behave on canvas. Her process is slightly different because it's oils, but I'm taking inspiration from that process.
I really love the artists of the St Ives movement, especially Barbara Hepworth. What it is about those artists—there's a lot of different artists in that group—is the simplicity, the restraint in terms of color palette or mark, that I find very interesting. Really distilling what you want to say in your work through sculptures, paintings and drawings, and all the different technical elements, I find fascinating. I try to pull these sorts of entities into my practice.
In a broader sense, the influences and narratives of my work are really rooted in place and landscape, geology, the building blocks of wildlife, how landscape works, but also place in a more community sense, and how they interact with each other in terms of relationship and connecting. When you have a deep understanding and relationship with place, then you're more likely to care for it. That's really the root of what I care about—communicating these sorts of ways to build relationship with place and experience.
Growing up in quite an urban area in the central belt of Scotland, which I loved, I've just never quite felt like I belonged. For the last fifteen years I lived on the border between two towns, so quite literally my neighbors lived in a different town to me, which was an interesting manifestation of that feeling of being on the edge.
At the end of 2022 we moved to the Isle of Bute, where we've been for eighteen months, and I can honestly say that I've never felt more at home anywhere than I do here. It's an incredible feeling, something that we didn't quite expect fully—you can't know that until you've lived in a certain place for a certain amount of time, I think—but it was really quick how quickly I felt at home here. A lot of that is to do with the people that we've met since we came here, but the island itself and the landscape and the wildlife—the feeling of home and acceptance here is really strong.
With the turn of spring and the return of the light, how hugely that affects my entire being. I think it's really important, and what I've tried to do is seek out light, especially through the winter to actually get outside in that small gap of light we have in Scotland, and make the most of it.
In terms of my work, I think I do try to harness that kind of lightness in my images as a whole. I'm more drawn in the last couple of years to leaving quite a lot of space around the canvas, so leaving negative space to bring lightness. Also, the washes of the inks that I use are almost always transparent. Obviously, the more they build up, the more opaque they become, but it's just filtering that light through the color. Light is really important and I think that is something that attracted me to the St Ives style as well, that crystal clear quality of light.
Being from Scotland is something I feel really proud of. As I mentioned, I've struggled in my life with feeling like I belong in a more localized way, something that I've explored a lot in my practice, but in terms of Scotland as a country, I've always felt really proud of that and that belonging to Scotland. It's such a rich and diverse country in terms of nature and landscape and geology and people.
That really led through to these explorations of feelings of connection and belonging to place that runs through my work.
I think I got my first tattoo when I was nineteen. It didn't really mean anything and you can't really see it. But more recently in the last two years, I have got more visible tattoos, and I feel like as an artist, as a job, it feels entirely acceptable to have really visible tattoos. You can see this one here and this one here. Historically a lot of employers aren't entirely happy with visible tattoos like I have, but I felt when I was forty, when I had my first real visible one, it felt like quite an empowering thing to do.
In terms of the actual artwork, this is like a botanical wrap around my arm, and it says something about who I am and it's a conversation starter, which I feel similarly about my artwork. I like to think that it sparks a conversation: what is that and what does that mean and what do you get from that? So having visible art on me feels like an expression.
Both times that I've had these visible tattoos I've put a lot of trust in the artist. I've sought out an artist as opposed to just a tattoo artist who will tattoo you with whatever motif you might choose. These were both designed and drawn by an artist—I just gave them an idea of what I wanted and left the whole rest of the thing to them. I feel really proud to have such beautiful work from another artist permanently on my body. This one here is my most recent, a picture of a harebell, which I identify with in terms of going about trying to find your home.
I feel quite strongly, and increasingly so, that art shouldn't be frozen in time. I think in the age we live in with climate change and things like that, nothing should be permanent. We shouldn't be making things that will last forever. But similarly, art shouldn't just be on your wall and be untouchable and screened.
I've spoken earlier about the functionality of art in your everyday life—why shouldn't the things you use every day be art? The cup we're drinking water from was thrown by my friend who's a ceramist. The pot the tea bags are in in the kitchen is a beautiful handmade pot. As I mentioned earlier, when I was young, the glasses that we drank from at home were Mondrian designed, or Mondrian themed. The chairs at our dining table had Mackintosh structure in the back.
I think it's important that art is ingrained into your life. It shouldn't just be that you only see art in a gallery or a museum. It should be part of your life, and there's no reason it shouldn't be.
I think that's something I feel when I'm making a painting—I feel more like I'm making an object. In terms of it not being just an image, a two-dimensional image, I build the canvas stretcher bars, I stretch the canvas and prime the canvas, so it's an object rather than just a flat image. I try to bring depth and dimension in with the layers of the inks and the marks that I'm making so that it's a more tangible item rather than something that's on your wall that you're scared to touch.
Music is a huge part of my life. Growing up, my dad was in the music industry, so I've always been exposed to a huge variety of music and had quite an eclectic taste even as a young child. I loved Pat Metheny when I was like five. It's just grown from there.
When I'm asked what genre of music I like, I can't answer that because I just like all music. My tranquil playlist is insane. I'm always listening to music of some kind, but when I'm making art, it is quite particular what I can and can't listen to.
I really love contemporary Scottish trad, so young trad bands with fiddles and bagpipes and the likes, but much more contemporary in nature, much more fresh and modern. Contemporary trad is our biggest love, music-wise.
However, lyrically, I'm fascinated by how people write music, write lyrics, and how they can allow the audience to paint a picture in their minds using words. As a visual artist, that's like a different league. I can't always articulate with words what I really want to say—that's why I make images. So I find music a fascinating way of producing art that lyrically allows you to transcend to somewhere else in your mind. That's what I listen to a lot at the beginning of my process, the lyrical works.
I also listen to audiobooks. It's about how people can use words to articulate the same sorts of things that I'm trying to make in visual art. A lot of it is nature-based songs as well as books. I love Karine Polwart, who is a Scottish composer, lyricist, singer, and she does a fabulous job of storytelling through her songs about landscape, space and geology—fascinating things to be learned from listening to songs.
So the beginning of my process, I like to bring a lot of those outside influences in while I'm making, because the first layers of my work are organic—it doesn't take an awful lot of me trying to decide what I'm doing. It's much more free, so I can use those influences at the beginning.
As time goes on and I'm trying to really respond to each layer, I'll move to more instrumental music because I still get quite a lot of visual stimulus from instrumental music. Again, Scottish trad bands like Elephant Sessions or Rura, where I can visualize landscapes and experiences through just those notes and instruments. As I'm trying to think more about the marks and how I'm going to bring the next layers to my paintings, I find that instrumental music is more conducive to that part of my process. So music is hugely important.
Currently I work with inks and various mixed media, but inks is my main medium, which hasn't always been the case. When I started making art ten, eleven years ago, I was using woven textiles, Harris Tweed, making geological maps and diagrams from various bits, which sounds a bit mad, but it kind of just made sense to me at the time.
I had developed a real interest in geology. My partner studied geology at university, and when we started going out together and exploring Scotland, it's something you can't really get away from—wondering why these hills exist and why they look like this. So my interest in geology really peaked at the same time that I started making art.
Harris Tweed was really inspired by the landscape and physically dyed with natural elements of the landscape. In my mind that all fitted together. What I loved about textiles was the ability to be really precise with what I was making, cutting out little bits of tweed, fitting them together. It was quite a prescriptive process with lovely colours and textures, and I used the sewing machine to bring even further texture in contour lines. It was a really tactile medium to use.
However, it took its toll physically on me as the work got bigger and the demands on my body increased. It became quite a painful process in the end. I think my last textile commission was over three metres in length and it took quite a lot of physical effort.
But also I started to feel a little bit restricted in terms of colors—you're restricted by what the weavers are weaving at that time. And so I became increasingly interested in the part of my process that came before cutting threads, which was painting.
I've always painted as part of my process, but until that point it was just sketching and painting before I moved on to the textile works. So I decided to take some time out of my practice, which, similarly to when I left my proper job to become an artist, people thought I was a bit mad for abandoning this really successful process that I had because it was different.
But I just began to feel a bit unfulfilled creatively by it. So I took a year out and explored painting. There was a lot of learning, and I came to this technique that I've been using with the diluted inks. I've been exploring and developing that process for the last four years now.
I see my paintings similarly to the process that I went through in making the textile works—being map and scientific data driven pieces. I see my paintings in a similar light as being map-like, but more maps of experience rather than descriptions of landscapes.
I would say the biggest part of my development process for any painting—I tend to work more in a series of paintings, I don't just work on one painting at a time—I guess I describe my process as fits and bursts. I don't paint every day. So the biggest part of my process is actually going out and experiencing the things that I'm making art about. It's getting out every day for a walk, for a swim, or a kayak, or going bird watching, reading books about the subjects that I'm interested in, researching things. A massive amount of my time is spent just filling my cup with all that stuff.
Then comes the process of figuring out how this will actually come out and be a tangible thing to communicate with people. A lot of that doesn't always look like work, but that's the biggest and most important part of my process.
Following that, I then start to work in a sketchbook, but I don't necessarily take my sketchbook out and make sketches from life. Sometimes I'll do that—I think we tend to have the urge to make an image that looks like the place we're depicting, especially if it's place-based. So sometimes I'll do a little landscape sketch just to get that out of my system, pin down some marks and colours and shapes, but then build a kind of palette of colour but also of marks and shapes that can be put together to bring this map-like quality to be read about the experience or the subject that I'm making art about.
Then I spend a lot of time pre-mixing all my inks. All the different colours are mixed; I have lots of jars and bottles with all the different colours. Then I'll make a big test sheet with all my colours and marks. I do a lot of mark making in my sketchbooks just to try and pin down what marks really represent the different elements that I'm trying to convey. It could be like dancing on the surface of the water, the movement of the water, the waves, the currents, different elements, so I'll test a lot of different marks.
There is a long process before I then start cutting canvas and building structures. There's a huge amount of work before I start actually pouring the first layers of ink onto the canvases.
The painting itself happens in quite a concentrated space of time. I take over the whole house when I'm painting. I tend to work on a lot of different pieces at the same time. I'll work on them all day, every day. Each layer I'll let dry overnight, so everything will get one layer to let dry overnight. In that time, that allows me the slowness to consider—I'll observe each piece and see what the ink is doing because a lot of it is down to chance. What will happen when the ink settles and dries? I can tweak it, tint it and push it around a little bit, so with each layer I respond to the next until there comes a point where I feel happy with that composition and the elements of telling the story that I intended.
So my first piece of advice from a personal level is never think it's too late. It's a tale as old as time—you hear about a lot of artists who start really late in life. For me, I thought I had left it too late because I didn't go to art school straight from school and take the traditional path. It's never too late because it's in you. It's just the right time and place for you to tap into it.
The next thing would be get out and talk to people. Go to the openings, go to the shows, go to the artist talks, talk to people, make connections, build community. Only good things come from getting to know people and talking to people.
And finally I would say, going back to my process, experience stuff. Don't just stay in your studio every day and paint because you'll run out of things to paint about. Get out, do things, build a relationship with nature, build a relationship with your community, and you'll find that you have infinite amounts of things to make art about because it is out there.
