Jayne Marie Ollin
By all intentions I am first and foremost a painter, although I love all mediums that allow me to experiment and offer an element of surprise. I have been drawn, as far back as I can remember, to working with mediums that involve water. As early as kindergarten, using a little spit, I promptly turned my colored pencils (given for some academic exercise) into one of my first abstracts “red and blue.” It could have had something to do with the larger than life posters of Nixon and Kennedy on the back of the koi pond in my classroom at Swarthmore Elementary.
Water finds its own way, often in spite of our efforts to control it. It has always been my teacher; alluring and demanding. Mediums that require water challenge me to reconcile my human need to be in control simultaneous to my need for spontaneity and experimentation. When I can manage that dynamic there is a symbiotic relationship that culminates in nothing short of a birth; an image with agency and identity, a new Self outside my self. Even when the image fails to participate, or I lack the skill to negotiate, the act of painting alone brings me to a rare sense of peace. It is where time stands still and the problems of the world, or my world, cease to exist.
I have worn many hats in my life. A few years after Art Schools I became a mother, and then, a single mother. Having to choose between full time painting and providing for my children financially, I channeled my creative energy into developing a line of herbal formulas, founding an herbal products company in rural Vermont, and a practice in wholistic healing, homeopathy, Jungian Psychology/Humanistic Astrology. But children are natural artists, so studio time was always a priority, if not fine art, the organic, traditional art forms inspired by holidays and the changing seasons. What at first felt like a fork in the road – making art or making money – was actually a merging of creative disciplines that fed each other, and my family. My daughter, Nakima Ollin, emerged at an early age, as a gifted artist and went on to surpass me by leaps and bounds in her sense of color, proportion, discipline and genius.
Speaking more intimately: painters are aware of the importance of darkness, of shadows, along with light. For myself this speaks to an existential reality; unavoidable suffering takes place alongside happiness and joy. Embracing the essential relationship between suffering and joy, is, I believe what truly frees us from the prison of mediocrity; where only a lack of imagination keeps the door locked from the inside.
I learned in a humanities course that children whose curriculum's included art were profoundly more empathic than those who lacked that opportunity. I don’t recall the theory, but my guess would be that through creating we can connect with ourselves fully and intimately. And, through that connection, find love for ourselves in our extremes of shadows, of lightness, and therefore others.
A few words about one of my latest series, kiwi 1, 2, 3, and 4 (2022). I have never met a kiwi nor have I been to New Zealand. Supposedly flightless, she appeared through a collection of water molecules, between a double paned window in the attic of our winter home, at the southernmost tip of New Jersey. A point of land world renowned for its spring and fall migrations of birds and butterflies, making their way north or south. For myself, she is a reminder that although our days on earth are numbered, given climate change, droughts, fires, floods, habitat destruction and wars, and our own mortality, there are ancient truths and laws of existence that go far beyond the limits of linear time, of our conscious minds, where creative expression through imagination might be our saving grace, and lead us into new dimensions of thought.
By all intentions I am first and foremost a painter, although I love all mediums that allow me to experiment and offer an element of surprise. I have been drawn, as far back as I can remember, to working with mediums that involve water. As early as kindergarten, using a little spit, I promptly turned my colored pencils (given for some academic exercise) into one of my first abstracts “red and blue.” It could have had something to do with the larger than life posters of Nixon and Kennedy on the back of the koi pond in my classroom at Swarthmore Elementary.
Water finds its own way, often in spite of our efforts to control it. It has always been my teacher; alluring and demanding. Mediums that require water challenge me to reconcile my human need to be in control simultaneous to my need for spontaneity and experimentation. When I can manage that dynamic there is a symbiotic relationship that culminates in nothing short of a birth; an image with agency and identity, a new Self outside my self. Even when the image fails to participate, or I lack the skill to negotiate, the act of painting alone brings me to a rare sense of peace. It is where time stands still and the problems of the world, or my world, cease to exist.
I have worn many hats in my life. A few years after Art Schools I became a mother, and then, a single mother. Having to choose between full time painting and providing for my children financially, I channeled my creative energy into developing a line of herbal formulas, founding an herbal products company in rural Vermont, and a practice in wholistic healing, homeopathy, Jungian Psychology/Humanistic Astrology. But children are natural artists, so studio time was always a priority, if not fine art, the organic, traditional art forms inspired by holidays and the changing seasons. What at first felt like a fork in the road – making art or making money – was actually a merging of creative disciplines that fed each other, and my family. My daughter, Nakima Ollin, emerged at an early age, as a gifted artist and went on to surpass me by leaps and bounds in her sense of color, proportion, discipline and genius.
Speaking more intimately: painters are aware of the importance of darkness, of shadows, along with light. For myself this speaks to an existential reality; unavoidable suffering takes place alongside happiness and joy. Embracing the essential relationship between suffering and joy, is, I believe what truly frees us from the prison of mediocrity; where only a lack of imagination keeps the door locked from the inside.
I learned in a humanities course that children whose curriculum's included art were profoundly more empathic than those who lacked that opportunity. I don’t recall the theory, but my guess would be that through creating we can connect with ourselves fully and intimately. And, through that connection, find love for ourselves in our extremes of shadows, of lightness, and therefore others.
A few words about one of my latest series, kiwi 1, 2, 3, and 4 (2022). I have never met a kiwi nor have I been to New Zealand. Supposedly flightless, she appeared through a collection of water molecules, between a double paned window in the attic of our winter home, at the southernmost tip of New Jersey. A point of land world renowned for its spring and fall migrations of birds and butterflies, making their way north or south. For myself, she is a reminder that although our days on earth are numbered, given climate change, droughts, fires, floods, habitat destruction and wars, and our own mortality, there are ancient truths and laws of existence that go far beyond the limits of linear time, of our conscious minds, where creative expression through imagination might be our saving grace, and lead us into new dimensions of thought.
Kiwi "3" 2022
Current
2022
Philadelphia Water Color Society Members Show
https://pwcs.wildapricot.org/exhibitions/2022-members-show#gallery
Prince Street Gallery. NY. 14th Juried Annual Show.
August 2 2022
https://princestreetgallery.com/
The Store, South West Harbor Maine. Ongoing. Prints and original work.
https://www.facebook.com/TheStoreinSWH/
Past
EXHIBITS/Gallery's Etc.
1976 The Bubbling Well Gallery, Cape May New Jersey: Solo Exhibit. Lithographs "Inner Spaces"
1980 Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH Annual Group Exhibit
1989 City Center Art Center, Montpelier Vermont. Group Show
1990 Montpelier VT, Arts Alive. Area Artists Group Exhibit
2007, 2010 Crow Creek Gallery, Cape May CH NJ 08210.
2011 Beacon Art Shortwave Gallery, Stone Harbor NJ.
2014 Beacon Art Shortwave Gallery, Stone Harbor NJ.
2016 Studio Place Arts, Barre Vt. “Round and Around” Group Show
2016 Wilton Historical Society, Art and Artisan Annual Exhibit. Wilton Ct.
2017 Wilton Historical Society, Art and Artisan Annual Exhibit, Wilton Ct.
2017 Gallery Z Artists Coop, Lowell Ma., “Looking for America” Juried Group Show
2018 Swarthmore Friends of Arts. Annual Group Show, May
2018 Cerulean Arts' 6th Annual Juried Exhibition, Philadelphia Pa. https://www.whatsartblog.com/single-post/2018/07/21/Humans-and-Animals-and-Environs-Oh-My-Cerulean-Arts-6th-Annual-Juried-Exhibition
2018 Fall West Hartford Art League: A Sense of Place.
Group Show.
2019 35th Annual Juried Art/Artisen Show, Wilton Ct. Nov. 7,8,9.
2019 SK Gallery, NY., The Kristallnacht Exhibit. Juried Group Show. November 16th - December 17th
2020 Gallery Z, Lowell Ma. 'Ice and Snow' Juried Group Exhibit. March/April
2020 Sacramento Fine Arts Center. 'Abstract' Juried Group Show June.
2020 Wilton Historical Society Annual Arts/Artisan Show. Nov 5 - Dec 5.
2020/2021 The Store. Gallery. South West Harbor, Me. 2D and 3D bowls / abstract works / prints
2021 Arts Illiana Gallery, Terre Haute Indiana. MASKS Juried Group Show. March 5 June 5. http://artsilliana.com/Gallery
2022 Prince Street Gallery, New York. Annual Juried Show. July 2022
EDUCATION
MLAS/MS
THOMAS EDISON STATE COLLEGE, Princeton NJ 2017
Concentrations: Depth Psychology/Professional Counseling
Thesis: OASIS OF DISCONTENT: The Sociology of Addiction in Modern American Culture
DIP SNHS, LONDON, 2015 Homeopathy
BFA
VERMONT COLLEGE 2005: HUMANITIES/DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY
Theses: THE EMERGENCE OF THE FEMININE IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT 2004
THE ALCHEMIST WITHIN 2005
AA
COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF VERMONT 2014. HUMANITIES/HUMAN SERVICES AA
STUDIO WORK
MUSEUM SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON TX 1975-1977
Concentrations: Printmaking/Life Drawing
MUSEUM SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON MA 1974 Summer Session
Sculpture/Illustration
HS
Swarthmore Pennsylvannia
Major: 2-D Painting and Illustration 1973
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Owner/Founder/Formulator Lakon Herbals LLC (www.lakonherbals.com) 1986 – present
Private Practice: Herbal/Holistic Health Care Consultations 1985 – Present
Private Practice: Depth Psychotherapy/Astrology 1980 -present (www.depthastrologer.com).
Freelance Writer 1985-Present
Freelance Illustration Houston Texas 1974-1979