Jan Phethean spent her childhood in China, Africa and Malta and began her career in interior design and architectural design in Beirut. Several years followed in the United Arab Emirates where she designed luxurious interiors in local palaces. She returned to London in her late 20’s and established a successful international career as a designer and event dresser with high profile clients, both private and corporate including Coca Cola, Lilt and Virgin Atlantic Airways. Murals designed and often painted by Jan were an essential part of her interior design practice. She moved to Cornwall in 2003 to paint full time and became an Academician in 2017.

Artist Statement

Nature and wildlife have always been a passion of mine, an inherent part of my painting practice. I live on a treeless cliff and share a small grassy field which was devoid of birdlife when I first moved to Cornwall in the spring of 2003. I missed the sound of the dawn chorus. I set out to change that with my husbands help. In the intervening years trees have been planted and sheltered habitats for wildlife created. The field became a source of inspiration not only for the creativity of wild gardening, but also for my painting practice. I saw how inextricably birds are linked to the shape of the landscape they inhabit. The trees that shelter and feed them are a part of their very being and I found a way to express this through my composition and form in my current series of work. I often begin each painting with a landscape that I have observed, which the birds gradually inhabit, an organic process of growth…. ……just like my field

Phethean's paintings reflect a sense of the sublime. As an alchemist strives for gold Phethean strives to express the intangible, trusting her emotional instincts her work is both aesthetically beautiful and intensely courageous.

Londonart.co.uk