Jane Wallis grew up roaming the creeks and hills of the Missouri Ozarks. After exploring much of the country, Jane, her husband, and their two children chose the Northwest as their home, where they have lived for more than 40 years. This area, along with many places she has traveled in the U.S. and abroad, serves as fodder for her painting. An emotive relationship with the landscape is explored through her work, reflecting a sense of place and atmosphere, the subtleties of patterns, the warmth of sunlight, or the cool mysteries of shade. Figures representing that relationship are often found either dominating or subtly suggested in her work. Revisiting a site can be engaging to her as a painter, but encountering new places, new views, new people, and a different atmosphere are the most inspiring and exciting experiences for her. “Painting plein air is an important phase in my work. I like to imagine that I am confronting this visual world as if it were a symphony arranged by the light. The eye, like an intuitive ear, is tuned to this world. You listen with an all-absorbing emotion, allowing harmony and rhythm to permeate the senses. Using instruments such as watercolor, pastel, or oil, I express the musical score with color, contrast, and gesture.” Wallis is a Master Pastelist of the Pastel Society of America, a Distinguished Pastelist of the Northwest Pastel Society and the West Coast Pastel Society, a Signature member of the Northwest Watercolor Society, and an exhibiting member of Oil Painters of America.