270 North Wood Way 202/203, Ketchum
Artist Bio
Jan Lassetter resides in Sun Valley, Idaho where she spends most days in a sun-soaked studio overlooking Bald Mountain. Formerly a longtime resident of San Francisco, California, Jan spent 30 years painting in her beloved artist studio on Oakland’s waterfront. Along with her husband, Mike Mead—and Golden Retriever, Wacko—Jan greatly enjoys all that Idaho’s outdoors offer, as well as the small mountain community’s world-class visual and performing arts.
Artist Statement
REALISM: A SENSE OF PLACE
A sense of place can be spiritual, beautiful, awesome, disturbing, simple, or complex.
To capture this sense of place, different elements from studies are combined in composition. Canaletto inspired me to paint urban scenes with realistic detail and Martin Johnson Heade tantalized me with romanticism. My edges are soft and blended with images developed by applying many thin layers of oil paint. Working on a dark under painting, more depth, luminosity and vibrancy of color are achieved. Directional light with double images and reflections are important. I like a classical focal center point on the canvas, and utilize a juxtaposition of hard, dense, and solid against soft, translucent, and fluid in my work.
After formal training, my quest has been in constant pursuit of growth. How to convey emotion with line, color, paint, texture, and subject matter. How to approach light and dark. How to render movement in water and sky. How to achieve a sense of place.