Jane Sullivan Art

As a psychologist and artist, I am captivated by how we respond to and engage with the landscapes that surround us. A committed city dweller based in central London, my paintings are an emotional response to the places I travel to escape urban life and recharge. While I have long focused on the meeting of sea and sky, my work has evolved to explore vast, interior, and hidden landscapes: ocean depths, volcanoes, canyons, and deserts. Recently, I’ve returned to my roots, drawing inspiration from the monumental beauty of my homeland, Australia.

 

My work seeks to convey the energy and emotion I experience within the landscape. Working intuitively, I abstract from photographs and vivid visual memory to honour the sacred beauty, monumental scale, and fragility of these spaces. My primary medium is oil, which I value for its versatility, allowing me to create delicate surfaces layered with energetic, ephemeral lines. I embrace raw pigments, wax, organic materials, and, more recently, the tactile immediacy of working on paper. My process begins with mark-making, layering, and excavating to reveal hidden forms and textures. I experiment with perspective—often working from above, below, or within—to reimagine the dynamic essence of a place. Emergence is central to my process; while I may start with a concept, the magic unfolds when I surrender to the subconscious, letting the image take shape organically.

 

My paintings reflect my personal journey—a wandering fantasy inspired by my life between Australia and the UK, and the spaces I traverse in between. My deep connection to landscape began in childhood on Australia’s east coast; early memories are of a shy child watchful for what might happen in a landscape that is no stranger to extremes: long, blissful summers punctuated by fierce electrical storms, cyclones, floods, and droughts leaving the land scarred and fractured. These moments revealed the stark contradictions of nature’s fragile beauty and destructive power, shaping my reverence for the natural world and my fascination with humanity’s complex relationship to it. We admire and cherish the landscape, yet this adoration often stands in stark contrast to our defiance of and relentless exploitation of it. My work captures my love of exploration, my search for connection and belonging, and my constant pursuit of growth and intellectual challenge. At their core, my paintings express joy, curiosity, and a touch of defiance—in essence, a visual embodiment of freedom and transformation.

 

Fundamentally, though, I paint because I love it and what the process gives me. Perhaps through my painting I am in search of ‘home’, recognising that part of what my work is about is my quest to find where I belong.   For a very long time now I have lived far from where I grew up and there is a pervasive duality that informs how I experience and navigate the day-to-day.  Sometimes my work may reflect a sense of being the outsider, having unstable and tentative roots in different worlds, recalling that watchful child observing from a distance, unable to quite break in; the fissures and layers in the painted landscape perhaps a representation of me, and my relationship with the worlds I occupy.  Yet just as often, my work emerges from a sense of belonging—moments when I feel completely absorbed in and at one with a place, content, connected, and grounded in the present. Both perspectives are valid starting points for my practice, offering different lenses through which to explore and create. Together, they capture the complexity and uniqueness of the human spirit, reflecting the ever-shifting interplay between connection and distance, rootedness and flux.

 

Predominantly self-taught, I recently deepened my practice through two transformative years at Newlyn School of Art, where I sought to refine and expand my artistic voice. My work continues to explore the intricate relationship between humanity and nature, as I channel the vibrancy, intensity, and wonder of the landscapes that inspire me.  

 

I currently work full-time as an occupational psychologist, and cherish the time I have to devote to my creative studio practice.

​

Artist CV

​