Jantien Powell

I grew up on a small hill farm in Mamhilad, South Wales. I have always loved to draw and paint and I feel that living on an isolated farm really helped me to develop those skills while I was young. While my urban friends met up and played together my brother and I spent a lot of time drawing and we have both gone on to pursue careers that centre around those skills.

I love to paint life as I see it around me, the beautiful Welsh countryside, the hill farms, their inhabitants, the coastlines and domestic scenes. As a farmers daughter, these are the things that are dear to me.

I paint in acrylics. pastels and oils but I also love to use collage and texture to add depth and layers to a painting. I cut out relevant newspaper articles, sales reports from the cattle markets, images or text that I can weave into my paintings so that the viewer keeps finding new information, a name, a price, maybe a photograph that you might not notice at first. Not only does it add beautiful layers to a painting but it also adds an interesting marker in terms of dates and places that are included.

Colour and pattern are prominent themes within my work, I love to pick out the most unexpected colours in a scene and to experiment with the way that they can alter the dynamic of an image. I am drawn to patterns whether it is the jigsaw of shapes in an old stone wall or the repeating pattern of the sheep in the pens at the market. Maybe that says something of the way that life fits together and repeats itself, the seasons that come and go, generation after generation.

I aim to capture the feeling and the atmosphere of these people and places, the relationships, the familiarity, and the unexpected aspects that you just might not have noticed. Mostly, I hope you will be able to see the love that has gone into producing my paintings.

You can view my collection of work in my Paintings and Prints Galleries, or if you are interested in commissioning a painting, please feel free to get in touch to discuss it further. You can follow my latest paintings and sketches and pick up tips and techniques for your own painting practise at my Facebook page: Jantien Powell Artist