The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, Blackbird Media, and F&M Bank have teamed up to present the Artist of the Week on The Nashville Sign. This week, Jan Alice Keeling is featured!
Jan Alice Keeling’s evocative watercolors are painted with many layers to achieve an ethereal effect. Since childhood, Keeling has drawn with charcoal and graphite and painted with acrylics, oil paints, and watercolor. She always returns to watercolor, as she just can’t stay away from this fluid medium with its exquisite colors.
Keeling was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and she moved with her family every year throughout the South, Northeast, and Midwest. Later she attended art classes at Yale and Vanderbilt Universities. She landed back in Nashville in 1980 and has lived there happily ever since.
Jan says,“Cats have a mysterious magnetism, and watercolor is uniquely suited for painting them. I like to picture the translucent gaze that reflects a cat’s personality, sometimes confident, sometimes stealthy. Reproducing a furry coat on a hard surface with water, pigments, and a brush is a challenge during which I hold my breath until the task is done. My objective is to suggest the singular features appreciated by lovers of cats: striking beauty, cozy fur, a vibrating purr, the hint of menace behind crystalline eyes.”