Jane German

I loved to draw from a very early age and at 16 I left Ashby-de-la-Zouch Girl’s Grammar School to go to Loughborough College of Art where I trained for four years as a Printed Textiles designer, specialising in Furnishing Fabrics.  After taking a post graduate  Art Teacher’s Diploma at Brighton College of Art I pursued a career teaching art in London and West Sussex for the next 25 years before moving in 1992 to live in Starston, Norfolk where I continue to work. 

My house overlooks the River Beck where cattle graze and for twenty years or so these cows were very much a recurring theme in my work.  The garden, bounded by hedges, overlooks a water meadow  and for fifty years a Friesian dairy herd grazed in this meadow until it was replaced by a herd of Ruby Red beef cattle. The Black & White cattle featured in a series of paintings which I exhibited at Chichester Centre of Arts, Norwich Castle Gallery, Arts East and also The Cut Arts, Halesworth in a large joint show with my husband David Page, entitled The Other Side of the Hedge. 

I paint in oils and draw in soft pastels and at the moment am working on a series of still life paintings.  My compositions feature objects accumulated over the years such as bird feathers and nests, pebbles, shells and all manner of small items dug up in the garden.  I group things together in containers and paint them in great detail. It surprises me how these objects fall in rather happily together in simple harmony and subtle tones of colour.