Jane Head was born in Oxford, England in 1952. At the age of seven, she painted her first
collaborative nature mural for her classroom—frogs and squirrels on a 12 foot canvas. Moving ahead
to age of eight, she became inspired by a Bible story of Elijah and the Ravens. Her inspiration led to a
painting that received 100% and an excellent! Needless to say this experience motivated her to enter
local newspaper competitions, winning more money with drawing or painting than she could earn as a
hard-working newspaper delivery girl.
She attended Alsager College of Education in Cheshire, England and studied to be an art and physical
education teacher. On her first teaching practice, she balked at the little sea of faces, like baby birds
waiting to be fed knowledge she didn’t think she possessed—she flew the coop, and saved hundreds of
children from years of therapy. She returned to the Cotswolds where she studied at Banbury College of
Art and received a two-year Foundation Art Diploma.
Then she was whisked away by a knight in shining armor to California where she has lived and worked
ever since. Her artist and physical education training held her in good stead since she embarked on a
career as a wall paper hanger, where she worked on scaffolding and was occasionally seen hanging from
the proverbial chandelier! It was during this time that she met her future mentor, Charlene Clouse,
who gave her the courage to try painting on walls, columns, fireplaces, cabinets, floors, ceilings—in fact,
any surface that didn’t move was fair game. She honed her marbleizing and wood graining skills with
the English master William Holgate by painting at his home studio in Clitheroe, Yorkshire. Most of
her later painting education came from the many art books that she has collected throughout the years.
Her current medium, Venetian plaster and acrylic glazes have been developed as an art form after many
years of application in fine homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jane is used to “working large”, so
that large structural canvases give her the freedom to work broadly and boldly. She continues to work
realistically and adding elements of an iconic nature to her painting. Since living in Gualala, California,
she has been trying to capture the elements of earth and sky in her works. She recently (September
2006) won first place at the Art in the Redwoods exhibit in Gualala, California for “It’s Heaven Here”,
a mixed medium 48” x 54” painting that depicted her vision of where she now lives.
