Jane French

Jane has been working as a professional artist – specialising in portraiture - for around 15 years. She completed a BA degree in Fine Art at Newcastle University and an MA in Design at DMU, Leicester. She is an experienced tutor and has worked at various institutions around the UK. She has shown work at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Society of Oil Painters Exhibitions - at the Mall Galleries in London. She is a member of the Leicester Society of Artists and the Contemporary British Portrait Painters (CBPP). 

Describe your approach to teaching

My approach to teaching is to encourage, support and inspire! I like to share my approaches and techniques by means of demonstration but also through a process of carefully considered explanations. I believe that critiques of a student’s work should be honest – but kind! 

What inspires your own work? 

I am inspired by people, faces, characters, light, patterns, fabrics, memories… 
I am always drawn towards portraits in an art gallery and I particularly admire those that are painted using a style of impressionistic, loose or even abstracted realism.