SMALL PAINTINGS

KAYAKING IN A LOCHAN AT FINDO GASK

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil on wood panel, 2026, 12.5 x 18 cm

to paint these tiny pictures, I hold them in my left hand, so they are very intimate. The panels have been knocking around in my studio for a while with various undercoats on them, waiting for just the right subject. I love the Findo Gask landscapes, and seeing Samoan paintings of canoes brought old family photos of my grandfather and my father and his brother as teenagers kayaking on the North Norfolk beach in the ’30s to mind.

oil on wood panel, 2026, 12.5 x 18 cm

So I arranged for there to be enough water in front of the trees. This pink is a new colour I got from Michael Harding, Opera Rose. It’s stunning, a little bit tropical.

AT NIGHT, PINE MARTENS

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil on gessoed and cradled board, 20 x 20 cm, 2025

This little painting is the story of our first night in a cottage in Dumfries and Galloway, Squirrel Cottage. On holiday with my daughter this March, which I have not written up in my blog yet, I woke in the night and found that Lucy had decamped into my bedroom because there were weird noises in hers and she couldn’t sleep. So here she is on the floor on her mattress with little Nonna, and the curtains wide open and the pine martens who were probably the cause of the noise looking in. (We did not  actually have the curtains open) In the morning we found the feeder table knocked over, but when it was back up we had lovely daytime views of red squirrels, woodpeckers and lots of little woodland birds right outside the window. The cottage, an old estate gamekeeper’s house, with kennels in the garden, was surrounded by trees and rather lonely and it very much spooked my horror-film fanatic daughter.

THREE SMALL PAINTINGS ON PANEL OF DAYMOON AT FINDO GASK

Posted by Jane Wheeler

Findo Gask 4, 2026, oil on panel, 25 x 20 cm.

SOLD Findo Gask 3, 2025, oil on cradled panel, 20 x 25 cm

 

Findo Gask 2, 2025, oil on panel, 30 x 30 cm

various treatments of this spruce plantation in front of a lochan with the day moon high in the sky. Findo Gask is a tiny spot in Perthshire where the Romans had signal stations and a camp, and in WWII there was an RAF airfield there.

THERE IS ONLY THE HACKLE OF A HOLE WHERE THE WIND BLOWS

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil , sand and shell on a cradled gesso panel, 25 x 25 cm, 2024.

This small painting is from a group especially made for Tatha Gallery’s celebration of its tenth year.
They are part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog several times a month, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023). From it I have taken the titles of these small paintings.

AM I SATISFACTORY?

Posted by Jane Wheeler

oil on acrylic on cradled gesso panel, 2024,  7 x 5 ” with a tiny deer-suited figure sitting in the bandstand. The bandstand in the park (La Florida) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, that beautiful capital of the Basque country. Is she/are they singing tonight?