About the Artist

Jan Allen grew up in Indiana where she earned a Bachelor and Master of Sciences Degrees in Education from Indiana University. She taught school in Indiana for many years and also raised three boys. After moving to Colorado in 1995, she started studying painting with local artists Dorothy Northrup, Patti Andre´ at the Loveland Academy of Fine Art, and pastel artist, Clive R. Tyler. Currently her paintings can be seen at Meko's Gallery in Fort Collins, Colorado. She has shown in several regional and national juried exhibitions as well as invitational shows. Many of her paintings are in the homes of collectors throughout the country.

Jan's passion and inspiration for painting comes from a love of nature, people, and places. This inspiration can be found just outside her door on the Front Range in Colorado or in the nearby Rocky Mountains. It has also taken her to many other places. Whether it's a resident heron along the Poudre River, an old growth forest in British Columbia, a misty sunrise in the Quetico, or an Irish gentleman walking his deer hound, she captures that moment and feeling in time. She also finds a great deal of inspiration from the rural countryside and quiet pastoral settings.

For many years she has been painting traditional, representational art with a focus on landscapes and people. She loved what could be achieved with the layering of soft pastels on sanded paper. The reflective quality of pastels created a luminosity which no other medium could match.

Recently, her art has taken a new direction in medium and style. The idea of painting what she loved and just for herself freed her to take a more abstract and intuitive direction. Though the inspiration for many of these paintings started with the landscape, they developed a life of their own taking on an emotional charge that leaves viewers a connection purely of their own imagination. The paintings have a sculpted quality, slowly constructed by applying washes and layers of oil paint. Most are built with brush and palette knife, but no tool is off limits. The process of building layers of color and creating interesting textures becomes more important than the painting itself.