artist statement

My creative process begins with layering. I meditatively respond to colors, marks, shapes, and the relationships between them. There is a dance of intuitive gestures which both add to and subtract from the layers. Oil and cold wax medium is luscious, tactile, evolves over time, and fits my process especially well. Eventually, a composition develops. Usually, but thankfully not always, it goes through a frustrating awkward phase before it feels done, when no part of the painting asks for, or needs, anything else.

Vessels, arches, and repetitive patterns have all appeared in my work for decades without conscious intention. They seemed to reflect my inner emotional landscape, history, and relationships. Balance and decisions (forks in the road) have recently become more conscious themes in both my imagery and process as I become increasingly more aware of how the nuances of both impact every part of our lives on this fragile planet. What may initially appear chaotic often begins to unfold a complex balance over the course of multiple layers, allowing an inherent message or meaning to reveal itself, often in the form of these symbols.

Artist Zoë Cohen first named them archetypal. Rebecca Crowell observed that I “seem to be tapping into something out there.” Lisa Weiss said, “I see doors and connections to the beyond.”

I find connection in nature, and seek to express the feeling, mood, or atmosphere of being in a particular landscape [or garden], whether I’m painting it abstractly, realistically, or somewhere in between.

When you look for them, visual decision-tree branching symbols are everywhere in the landscape. Landscapes embed archetypal symbols.

Horizontally, they are forks in rivers. Sandbars. Low-tide wave patterns in sand. Estuaries. Forks in roads and trails. Air currents dividing clouds. Vertically, they are tree roots and branches. Waterfalls over rocks. Ocean waves crashing against irregular headlands, sometimes eroding over time into huge arch-shaped formations.

Throughout the animal world, we are made up of branching structures. Our limbs and digits fork in order to balance and grasp. Vessels and nerves split to feed and signal complex organic functions. Practicing medicine, I learned life-or-death forked algorithms for automatic decision-making in a crisis. Emotionally, we weigh the pros and cons to make every major life decision, or we rely on our intuition to decide for us - our “inner landscape.” As a species, we use visual symbols to reflect our collective unconscious.

I see branching everywhere in the world. It shows up in my painting. We are the landscape. We are nature. We are unique but also merely “human.” As my art evolves, I am more consciously tapping into and exploring these archetypal visual symbols of both our inner and outer landscape. 

bio

Jan Lintz explores her unique point of view on relationship, balance, and nature in an increasingly polarized and chaotic world.

Born in suburban Connecticut in 1955, Jan Lintz has lived in communities ranging from very rural (pop. 40 in somewhat utopian Tasmania, Australia and a harshly rugged eastern Montana county pop. 1,200 on the Canadian border) to very urban (Boston and Chicago). In 2007, she settled in Eugene, Oregon, two hours in any direction to the Pacific Coast, Crater Lake or Portland. 

Art, nature, and medicine are woven throughout Lintz's life. While working in a cardiac/medical ICU, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) with distinction at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990 mentored by abstract sculptor Truman Lowe and realist painter Carol Pylant. For a number of years, she produced and exhibited representational figure and still life paintings and abstract found-object sculptures. Her medical illustrations have been published in textbooks and journal articles in the US and France. Her art focused mainly on nature photography while practicing family medicine from 2001 until deciding to return to art full time in July 2020.

Jan has developed a special interest in oil and cold wax medium. She studies directly with coldwax pioneers and authors Rebecca Crowell and Jerry McLaughlin, traveling to Mexico, Ireland, and Colorado for in-person intensive workshops with them. She is also an ongoing member/participant of their online Coldwax Academy.

She has been busy showing her work in multiple solo, group, and juried shows including a recent acceptance into the first international juried cold wax exhibition.

Jan has decades of empathic teaching experience with both patients and medical providers and is now excited to be teaching art and sharing her enthusiasm for cold wax medium.

Her current art practice taps into the mystery of archetypal symbols as they express a deeply personal inner experience that, at the same time, connects symbolically with the human experience over the ages.