Biography
Jane Vogas (nee Lacey)
Jane trained from an early age with her father E. H. Lacey -a noted English sculptor, etcher and portraitist. She learned wood carving and gilding at the City and Guilds School of Art in London later attended life drawing at the Slade and ceramics at the Zurich school of Art and Design in CH.
She left the UK in 1969 to live in the small village of Plaka on Crete, Greece from 1969 – 1972 devoting her time to painting and exhibiting. After many years in Switzerland, where she married, had a family and later as a single mother divided her time between teaching art and antique restoration, she returned to Greece to set up a studio and again devote her time to painting.
She has exhibited in Switzerland, Greece, the UK- including the Royal Portrait Society and regularly exhibits in Crete
Apart from her work in oils and pastel Jane Vogas also teaches pottery at her studio in Crete,is actively involved in the local cultural committee, helping organize events and exhibitions. She works primarily ‘en plein air’ and is often exploring the countryside with her paint box and has recently started sculpting the human form in clay
Jane trained from an early age with her father E. H. Lacey -a noted English sculptor, etcher and portraitist. She learned wood carving and gilding at the City and Guilds School of Art in London later attended life drawing at the Slade and ceramics at the Zurich school of Art and Design in CH.
She left the UK in 1969 to live in the small village of Plaka on Crete, Greece from 1969 – 1972 devoting her time to painting and exhibiting. After many years in Switzerland, where she married, had a family and later as a single mother divided her time between teaching art and antique restoration, she returned to Greece to set up a studio and again devote her time to painting.
She has exhibited in Switzerland, Greece, the UK- including the Royal Portrait Society and regularly exhibits in Crete
Apart from her work in oils and pastel Jane Vogas also teaches pottery at her studio in Crete,is actively involved in the local cultural committee, helping organize events and exhibitions. She works primarily ‘en plein air’ and is often exploring the countryside with her paint box and has recently started sculpting the human form in clay
About me
I am a figurative painter and like to work from direct observation. I consider my work to be my personal response to the seen world. In my paintings I don’t attempt to tell a story, convey a message or portray an ideal, but rather to capture something that is transient. The visual worlds excites me, I react to the visual on an emotional level and my work is an attempt to convey the sense of wonder, to grasp that fleeting moment, glimpsed, a moment of recognition that is beyond words or thought, when the thinking mind is suspended and the moment is experienced. When I paint I try to hang on to that moment in memory and work from that. If my paintings find a resonance with the viewer then I am happy.
Influences
I first developed a love for drawing when from an early age I worked with my father, who, as an old Slade student under Henry Tonks was a great believer in the merits of drawing and hence I was encouraged to draw on a regular basis
I consider myself very fortunate to have had the chance to work several years along side the Catalan painter and poet Fidel Bofill. To this inspired and spirited painter of the Cretan countryside I owe a heightened awareness of what painting is about.
I am continuously influenced or touched by works of art of all schools and periods both abstract and figurative. For me painting has an element of magic and among the many contemporary painters I admire and whose work has this magic is Diana Armfield. Her lively brushwork and sense of music and poetry in her painting inspires me to strive higher…
Working methods
I first discovered the joy of painting en plein air in Crete in the late 60’s when I lived in the tiny village of Plaka opposite Spinalonga. The luminosity of the light, the wildness of the countryside, ramshackle villages, the poetry and randomness of it all charmed me and I felt compelled to record it in paint.
I don’t stick rigidly to any rules and like to experiment and often the best results are I think accidental, the trick is to recognize a ‘good’ accident!
I love the craft of painting and the qualities of oil paint – I vary my mark making between brushwork, scumbling and creating layers. I also apply impasto with a pallet knife, sometimes I feel I am sculpting with the paint! In fact I use whatever technique works!
I also greatly enjoy working with soft pastels- the immediacy of the medium suits my love of drawing.
I try to work on a painting a much as possible in situ. Laying the groundwork on the canvas, making sketches, color notes and maybe a pastel sketch then I continue working on the painting in the studio.
Greek version (EL)
I am a figurative painter and like to work from direct observation. I consider my work to be my personal response to the seen world. In my paintings I don’t attempt to tell a story, convey a message or portray an ideal, but rather to capture something that is transient. The visual worlds excites me, I react to the visual on an emotional level and my work is an attempt to convey the sense of wonder, to grasp that fleeting moment, glimpsed, a moment of recognition that is beyond words or thought, when the thinking mind is suspended and the moment is experienced. When I paint I try to hang on to that moment in memory and work from that. If my paintings find a resonance with the viewer then I am happy.
Influences
I first developed a love for drawing when from an early age I worked with my father, who, as an old Slade student under Henry Tonks was a great believer in the merits of drawing and hence I was encouraged to draw on a regular basis
I consider myself very fortunate to have had the chance to work several years along side the Catalan painter and poet Fidel Bofill. To this inspired and spirited painter of the Cretan countryside I owe a heightened awareness of what painting is about.
I am continuously influenced or touched by works of art of all schools and periods both abstract and figurative. For me painting has an element of magic and among the many contemporary painters I admire and whose work has this magic is Diana Armfield. Her lively brushwork and sense of music and poetry in her painting inspires me to strive higher…
Working methods
I first discovered the joy of painting en plein air in Crete in the late 60’s when I lived in the tiny village of Plaka opposite Spinalonga. The luminosity of the light, the wildness of the countryside, ramshackle villages, the poetry and randomness of it all charmed me and I felt compelled to record it in paint.
I don’t stick rigidly to any rules and like to experiment and often the best results are I think accidental, the trick is to recognize a ‘good’ accident!
I love the craft of painting and the qualities of oil paint – I vary my mark making between brushwork, scumbling and creating layers. I also apply impasto with a pallet knife, sometimes I feel I am sculpting with the paint! In fact I use whatever technique works!
I also greatly enjoy working with soft pastels- the immediacy of the medium suits my love of drawing.
I try to work on a painting a much as possible in situ. Laying the groundwork on the canvas, making sketches, color notes and maybe a pastel sketch then I continue working on the painting in the studio.
Greek version (EL)