I grew up in the English countryside where we always had a beautiful garden.
I studied at the Oxford College of Art in England, moved to Paris and studied at the Academie Julien.

In the course of travel in Europe and the Middle East I was inspired by the work of local and traditional artists and sold my first fabrics there.

I moved to New York City and for twenty-five years painted fabric for theater, film and fashion and I found myself wanting to bring color and life into the urban context. That was when I began to conceptualize color and dyes on cloth as painting.

The luminosity of silk and its rich interaction with the dyes reproduce the peaks of color saturation and the counterpoints of earth greens of the gardens of my childhood.

I have always been influenced by the natural world, flowers, mountains, water and skies. The artists I admire are Matisse, Kandinsky, Nolde, Klee, the watercolors of John Singer Sargent, the Japanese textile artists and the Impressionists.

A few years ago I began working abstractly. I am now interested in exploring elements that make pieces visually compelling--pure design and color.

My work is exhibited in galleries, public and industrial spaces and is part of many private collections.

I love the feeling of the silk, the flow of the dyes, the way the color works. It’s the color--the act of painting--seeing what happens with the color.

Jane Blake