Dark Earth at GalleryMuse

Jayne Sandys-Rentons’ use of mixed media, oils and ink on canvas, appear more as an excavation of what lies within the psyche of the land, rather than a representation of it. Yet these landscapes are recognisable and familiar.

In her search for traces of what’s gone before, from the people and elements that have shaped the terrain, she wanders along the lay lines and old pathways, in search for the sense of these spaces.

At times ghostly figures emerge through her landscape, the mysticism that is part of an accepted heritage of what it is to live and be part of the South Down gentle undulation of hills.

Back in the studio the artist ‘forgets’ the landscape and makes her marks to reveal what has moved her so deeply. She paints with a generous expression that often reveals menace, a dark sense of what it is to be here, amongst the hills that inspired Blake’s Jerusalem.

Jayne began her career in 1998 and received an MA with Distinction awarded by the University of Sussex at West Dean College and a BA (Hons) Fine Art at University College, Chichester.

She exhibits regularly in London and the South-East, and has works in collections across Britain and in Rhode Island, Boston, USA. Her studio is set up within the innovative Unity Studios, Chichester.