JAN GARTRELL

Although Jan Gartrell is an Award-Winning Artist, she embraces the challenge of capturing light and color as a constant learning experience. She approaches each painting in a different way. In bright, uninhibited colors she can reveal the world around us in a way we have never seen before. Sometimes she may take a quieter, more expressive approach to create a different mood using her unique designs, colors, and forms with a style all her own.

Her love for art shines through in every painting. From the very first stroke of the brush, you know it's going to be something special. A few more strokes and you can see it begin to come alive, until finally, a simple blank canvas has been transformed into something that provokes feelings and emotions in us all while falling under the umbrella of impressionism. It captures the play of light, color, and atmosphere rather than details.

Jan has taken part in many mixed and solo exhibitions and is among the rare few Artists selected to paint at the Smithsonian Art Train in 2002. Jan's work can be found at Gallery Central, in the permanent collection of the Saline County Library, the State House Convention Center, Historical Arkansas Museum, as well as many private collections across the United States.

They say that a picture paints a thousand words. With Jan Gartrell, that picture is painted with great care and love for art, and words are replaced with something deeper, more personal. It is a thousand thoughts, memories, and emotions that flood our minds when we view her work, and realize how she reaches for the soul of the painting, grasps it, and tranfers it to the canvas for us all to enjoy.