Pencil and paper were never far away from Jane’s hands throughout her life. From her Devonshire childhood to the other side of the world with her Australian husband and returning to England to raise her young family in Hampshire, she sketched.

Her first commission was a miniature of an old spaniel and this, coupled with her family’s continual encouragement to begin exhibiting and promoting her work, gave her the confidence to explore her painting as a small side income to her secretarial work. It rapidly blossomed and within a six months, she was a full-time artist.

Initially, her specialty was natural history – feathers, beetles, birds and pets in miniature. These exquisite, if diminutive creations in watercolour captured the finest details down to individual hairs and whiskers, but far beyond that, and infinitely more appreciated by the clients with their personal connections to and relationships with the subjects, they conveyed the personalities of their beloved pets.

Continually challenging herself, she explored different media, from oils and acrylics to pastels and pencil  and digressed in subject matter also. The landscapes of her beloved Devon from moorland to coastline were a captivating inspiration, as too were the scenes of timeless Devonshire life; its farmers and livestock, its forests and valleys, the traditions and nuances of the rural West Country.