Arts Visual Arts

Cover Artist: Jane Wells Harrison

Rolling Sushi. Jane Wells Harrison, artist

By Gina Malone

Recently, Jane Wells Harrison was going through some of the art she created in childhood and recognized in those earliest pieces the patterns and shapes that still show up in the work she creates today. “I have always been drawn to geometric shapes and color,” she says. “I was enamored with making marks and creating a visual record as soon as I picked up a big brush and painted at a stand-up easel in kindergarten. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever done.”

When it came time to attend UNC-Greensboro, her parents were not in favor of art as a major. So, Wells Harrison says, “I majored in Child Development and kept painting.” During her career as a social worker and program director for government agencies, she painted on her own time. Finally, in 1989, she left the field of social work behind and began painting full-time.

Routes. Jane Wells Harrison, artist

The encouragement of fellow artists led to her decision to seek an MFA in painting and drawing. “I started on that degree at East Carolina University the same semester that my oldest child entered UNC as a freshman,” she says. “Art school was particularly gratifying, and the chair of the painting department, Paul Hartley, was an important mentor.” Afterwards, she taught studio classes, design, painting media and art history at Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute (CCCTI), and became director of the college’s art program.

She works in the mediums of watercolor, oil, encaustic and collage, and also creates jewelry from vintage tin using a collage method. Art, for her, is a process of constant problem solving and decision making. “I always start with color and shapes, then work back and forth, adding and subtracting as I respond to what the marks suggest,” she says. “A painting takes on a persona and it speaks to the artist in this way. I love this phenomenon, and I make a conscious decision to follow where the painting leads. Therefore, I do not begin any work with a preconceived notion of what I want the end result to look like.

This is my method no matter what media I may be using—collage, oil, watercolor or encaustic, or a mix of media. As I work, I am making decisions based on design principles such as unity and variety, rhythm, movement and balance, constantly evaluating how it looks: Is it interesting? Does the work give the eye a pathway with quiet and active places? Does the work engage a viewer?”

Marina. Jane Wells Harrison

A feature of encaustic that she particularly likes is how it allows her to make marks in the paint with tools to create texture or mark variety. “Channels created by tools can be filled with other colors of encaustic paint and then scraped to clean up the shapes,” she says. “Therefore, the way I work is a matter of addition and subtraction.”

Often, she will work in a series, selecting a design element and exploring it in a variety of related ways with variations of color, size and scale, repetition, pattern and other features. “If my art wasn’t evolving,” she says, “I would be worried. I try to stretch! My work has evolved from plein air and more realistic work to abstraction and back again, but an interest in color and shape relationships has been a constant in all my work.”

A residency in Ireland took Wells Harrison away from Hurricane Helene’s devastation and a loss of electricity at home the Monday after the storm. “The month in Ireland I spent working was a relief, but my subject matter was most inspired by being in Ireland,” she says. Established in 2015, the Olive Stack Gallery Artist’s Residency Program is based in Listowel, a town in southwest Ireland. Her decision to attend was made at the urging of a friend and painter, Jean Cauthen, whom she has known since high school.

Since retiring from teaching at CCCTI, Wells Harrison has continued to teach classes at other schools, including Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Penland School of Craft. “I cannot say enough about the support, expertise, camaraderie and community found at craft schools such as Penland,” she says. “I have many connections and great friends as a result of my experiences there—and I learned numerous techniques which have expanded my studio practice.”

(Clockwise from top left) Winter; Coach; Tanya; and Ingrid. Jane Wells Harrison, artist

She is part of an art cadre whose other members are Jill Eberle, Kiki Farish and Jerry Jackson. The four painters participated in a Winter Residency at Penland as a group several years in a row. “We routinely critiqued our work and it was a powerful experience,” she says. “We continue to support each other in a special way.”

She and Jackson, owner of Gallery 164, in Waynesville, have been friends and colleagues with intertwined art lives since the 1990s. “Having followed various styles of Jane’s work for many years,” he says, “the foundation of her work has centered on layering imagery and color to create transparency and depth. Getting lost inside her work is energizing and always an adventure.”

Creation of art is as crucial to her as nourishing her body with food, Wells Harrison says. “My identity is being an artist, and I feel most complete when I am making a work of art.”

Find Jane Wells Harrison’s work regionally at Gallery 164, 164 South Main Street, Waynesville. She works from a studio at home, Fofum Gallery, in Lenoir. Follow her on Facebook (Jane Wells Harrison) and Instagram (janewellsharrison).

1 Comment

  • Your art is colorful and inspirational. I was a quilter and stitcher in TN for 19 years. Some of my work I sold in Asheville. Then moved back to CA and there were no quilters around me, but painters. So this fiber person became a painter, using the colors you do. I look forward to a visit again back in TN/NC where it all began. Thank you and good luck. Annie

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