Jane Skaar Coleman | Arizona
After graduating from the University of Denver with a BFA in Art Education, Jane taught art in public schools for six years. Leaving her teaching job in Wyoming for a short time, she started painting full-time and eventually returned to Riverton, Wyoming where she was president of the Wyoming Watercolor Society and the Wyoming Artists Association. Watercolors of old barns, flora, wildlife, horses and animals sold in galleries throughout Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming. Eventually Wickenburg became a second home where she and her husband now enjoy the desert with their horses and dogs.
“I always loved art and horses and decided to major in art. In college we painted on large, self-constructed canvases with big house-painting brushes and the only limitation on size was getting it through the doorway. In Abstract Expressionism you work with color, shape, pattern and other design elements to come up with a painting that feels well balanced, emotionally interesting or worth looking at with no reference to any realistic subject matter. Painting on these large canvasses was fun and somewhat physical, although it was often difficult to know when you felt like the painting was finished. I changed to realism when teaching and a real turning point came when I took a watercolor workshop with Casper artist Stephen Naegle. Watching him paint was like watching magic and his watercolors were exceptional. I appreciate the many oil and watercolor workshops I have taken with well-known artists and cherish my notes from their classes.”
In addition to Cowgirl Up! her major exhibitions now include the American Academy of Equine Art, the Mountain Oyster Club in Tucson, AZ, the Cheyenne Western Spirit Art Show, and member juried shows of Women Artists of the West, Oil Painters of America, and American Women Artists. Recent Annual Exhibitions of WAOW has found her work in the Hanna Gallery, Fredericksburg,TX, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, OK, and Mary Williams Fine Art Gallery, Boulder, CO. Lately her paintings were in the OPA’s Western Regional Exhibitions at the Illume Gallery of Fine Art, St. George, UT and in 2021 the Mark Arts Gallery in Wichita, KS. Past exhibitions have included the C.M. Russell in Great Falls, MT, Western Art Assn. in Ellensburg, WA, Western Spirit Art Show in Cheyenne and making the Top 100 in the “Art For The Parks” competition in Jackson Hole, WY back in 2004.
Permanent collections of Jane’s work can be found in the Governor’s Mansion in Cheyenne, Wells Fargo Bank, BTI Trucking Company and the Community College in Riverton, the Rock Springs Fine Art Center, the Dubois Museum and the Headwaters Community Center and many other private collections in the United States and Europe.
Main Gallery: