REFLECTIONS

is a collaboration between a painter and a poet – a husband and wife team - resulting in forty-five pairings of a poem with a painting. All the work is original.

The paintings were created using Chinese brushes, inks and colours and xuan paper. Pastel has also been used in 'The Cam in Winter' and gold leaf in 'Near Pokhara'. The red seal or chop depicts the artist’s name in Chinese seal script and was designed for Jane Evans by her teacher, Professor Chen Bing Sun.

This is what Qu Leilei, a globally recognised and influential contemporary Chinese artist, says about the paintings by Jane featured in Reflections:

“There is a unique quality to the art of Jane Evans which stands out among the oriental painting community in the UK. … Blending her skill in observational painting and drawing she has taken the expressive power of the Chinese brush and incorporated it into her Western vision.  In Chinese art what is most valued is the combination of painting from nature, inspiration from the old masters and expression from the artist’s own heart.  Jane is working in exactly this way. She has my deepest admiration for this.” 

From all the paintings produced during her long and successful artistic career, Jane has brought together in this book those with which she is particularly pleased and/or have a special significance for her. Martin has written a poem in response to each of these selected works. This is what Neil Roberts, Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Sheffield University, who reviewed unpublished first drafts of these poems, says about them:

“Martin's carefully crafted poems- meditations, interpretations, imitations, flights of fancy - beautifully complement and give a new dimension to Jane's paintings.”

The wide range of subjects addressed by the forty-five pairs of paintings and poems in Reflections and the different ways in which these subjects are treated are illustrated here with four examples taken from the book.