Jan V. Roy

About the artist

Jan V. Roy began her artistic career as a silk-screen artist in 1979, when she received her first commission from the Portland Symphony Orchestra. For 25 years she designed and printed over 40 posters for various cultural organizations. Jan's highly successful Brooklyn Bridge Centennial poster crystallized attention to her talent, resulting in one-man shows in Rome, Italy and Paris, France. Jan turned exclusively to painting in 1999. "When I am in the studio and removed from the emotions, distractions and complications of a place, I start putting down paint and I expect, though don't know for sure, that it is color that leads me along. I paint, scrape, cover again, allowing the history of the painting to show through. I'm tapping the unconscious, cracking the shell that separates me from everyday life. The boudaries are infinitely open. I can go anywhere in this inner life and that's the beauty of it for me. There is nowhere else where I am so free."