Jan Heaton’s “The Market”

A daily obsession with living healthy, what we eat, where our food comes from, and how it is grown and prepared has provided the focus for her current series, The Market. For the past three years Jan hasbeen working on a collection that has grown to over 150 paintings, inspired by regular visits to the farmers’ markets in Austin. Initially she painted small studies on 4 x 4″ squares of heavy Fabriano cotton paper. The tiny watercolors were used as a reference for the larger paintings that followed. She looked to the market as a model for returning to the fresh fruits and vegetables her family cultivated in their small Detroit backyard garden. She also sought out with curiosity the mysterious varieties of watermelon radishes, maroon carrots, fennel, oyster mushrooms, and golden beets that were not familiar to their family crop – ever mindful of the seeds, the patterns, and the process that eventually bring these edible organic treasures to the table. Her objective is to capture not only what she observed but to isolate, simplify and glorify the produce, recording the essence of a fruit or vegetable with the evocative and sensuous forms always revealed in nature. Heaton’s desire is that her artwork will allow the observer to see a familiar form with a unique perspective.