Jane Mitchell

Jane Mitchell lives and works in Edinburgh and is based in a studio in Leith. She has won many awards and has been involved in several exhibitions, with work held in corporate and private collections. Jane is also a part-time tutor with the Open College of the Arts, teaching drawing and painting and organising workshops and exhibition visits for students, who range from beginners to final year degree level.

Jane will be teaching watercolour painting and drawing techniques in Tuscany in May and June and in Umbria in September and October. She is an experienced teacher from beginners right up to degree level so her courses will be suitable for anyone. She will explore the use different media and develop skills in perspective and composition working with the stunning Tuscan landscapes. There will also be sketch book work to make the most of excursions.

"My aim as a tutor is to provide a quality of teaching suitable for all levels, to help the beginner to gain confidence and to challenge the more experienced. We will start off with group lessons which will then lead on to individual tuition, responding to the needs of all in the group, encouraging and teaching each student on an individual level and helping the group to learn from each other." 

"We will cover basic drawing and watercolour techniques, covering all of the necessary elements. I encourage students to develop a feeling for the materials and to enjoy the process. We will use a variety of materials to explore the use of colour, tone and composition and produce drawings and paintings with atmosphere and depth. This beautiful location is ideal for a landscape course and it is important to learn how to select a viewpoint and capture the unique qualities of the countryside. We will also look at how artists gather information in sketchbooks while out and about, in order to use drawings to develop paintings back in the studio."

Jane's Own Work

Jane Mitchell works in the medium of drawing, painting and screenprinting. The subject matter of her work deals with ruin, destruction and damage, reinforced and informed by her visit to Chernobyl in June 1988, two years after the nuclear disaster occurred. Her present work includes an examination of the unseen threat of radiation and the negative impact of humanity onthe environment, looking in particular at debris and abandoned ruined buildings, contaminated trees and water. Her work investigates the ability of nature to reassert itself and heal the landscape.

In order to present the threatening, sinister subject of radioactivity, fire and destruction as abenign or attractive image, she uses the ideas of camouflage and dazzle painting to break upand simplify shapes and tones. This produces an abstracted hard-edged image, retaining traces of the representational scene on which it is based, and the finished work becomes a hybridof photography, painting and printmaking. The work is produced slowly from fragments of photographs and the paintings and prints are time-consuming to complete as they are detailed and meticulously planned.