San Francisco based artist, Jane Burton, graduated from UC Davis with a BFA, studying under Wayne Thiebaud, Roy DeForest and Robert Arneson. She continued with graduate school then began a career in Graphic Design. Some years later her passion for ceramics and sculpture was reignited, inspired by a trip to Abiquiu, New Mexico where she worked with Native American potters. While working as a potter, Jane’s work grew larger and larger and quickly evolved into figurative sculpture. Four years later, she was offered her first solo show where she featured a two-story, twenty foot ceramic figure.

Jane Burton’s current body of work is a timeless examination of humankind through the female form. Through her gestural and towering totemic figures, we examine perceptions of who we are as individuals – how we present ourselves, how we appear, our gender socialization, our self-worth – our strength, perseverance, spirituality and aging. Her figures are public; yet private; strong yet vulnerable.

Burton has chosen clay for its primal, fluid and malleable nature. “I feel a connection in the clay body – its nature – and, intuition takes over. As layers build upon each other and the pieces grow, they acquire their own spirits and our spirits connect. The exposed layers evoke layers of time, experiences and growth – the rhythm of life.”

I’m intrigued with objects that hold life – the shell of the hermit crab, the cocoon of the butterfly, the human body. Over the layers of time, they hold the story of the life that resides within. The vessels remain as life moves on, leaving their stories behind.

Many of Burton’s works are scribed in her hand. They are personal thoughts and perceptions on who we are and how we become who we are. Trained as a painter, the surfaces into which she writes are organic and complex layers of analogous or complimentary glazes and oxides applied, fired, etched and re-fired. Her artwork has found placement in corporate and residential settings worldwide.

Jane’s paintings, like her sculptures, work with layers, texture and mark-making. Consciously choosing abstract work for her painting, she wanted to depart from the figurative sculptural work; to go beyond the familiar. The subject has changed, yet the emphasis on layers, color, and line, as well as conceptual issues of human impact; and perception; have not.

Her paintings are a visual interpretation of the tension between chaos and imposed order, the concrete and the imaginary, the known and unknown. Scientific and metaphysical concepts of collective consciousness, relative truth, natural order, and quantum entanglement are explored.

“Each piece will evoke its own emotion, but overall, I hope the initial impact will be one of discovery, fascination, empowerment, and revelation. It’s the time after the initial impact that interests me the most. The subtle shift in light, in color, the quality of the line. The fingerprints. The discovery in the layers of underlining bits of color, which mark from stories from the past that have been covered up and long forgotten.”

“My sculptures and my paintings will always influence each other… it’s all my art. I once had a professor tell me each piece is pregnant with the next. That’s how I feel about the two mediums. The process is different, the outcomes vary, but the birth comes from me.”