When Janey Mae was nine years old, her mom signed her up for oil painting instruction by an elder named Mrs. Bailey. In a garage in the Oregon countryside, Janey's first timid paint strokes scrubbed out a muted sky over the Grand Canyon. It was a soft start, but it was a start that would lay the foundation for decades of love, experimentation and freedom found in the paint.

After her college studies, Janey Mae moved from the farm fields of the Willamette Valley to the shores of the Oregon Coast. Her second day in Newport, the snow veiled the sands and cliffs of her new home. She took off her layered socks and waded into the churning current of the cove near Yaquina Head. Here, she discovered the water. She became friends with the tide. She studied the smells, the mist, the textures, the turmoil, the swells and unearthed a feeling of echoed memory in her growing understanding of the sea. Through poetic writing, drawing and painting, enriching community, singing, hand dancing and nourishing moments at the shore, she found a way to keep looking toward the horizon. 

Janey Mae found peace in the beautiful decay, unique patterns and contrasting forces within the forest and the coastline. She explored the balance of boldness and delicacy and something new began to emerge in her work. Her foundation in realism, led to highly-detailed explorations of surrealism. Where gravity, natural elements, color and light began to create their own rules on the canvas. Janey began repetitively exploring symbolic and surreal intrepretations of the creatures and materials around her. She explored with the increasing freedom to subdue or exaggerate realitiy as the muse saw fit. Continuing with this feeling of freedom, Janey hopes to share more of her artwork with the wider community and bring dynamic expressions of growth, tension, decay, levity and joy to you and your life. 

While based in Newport, Oregon, Janey Mae's work has been showcased/sold at the Visual Arts Center Runyan Gallery, OSU LaSells Stewart Center, Yaquina Art Gallery, For Art's Sake Gallery, Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital, Ocean Mist Counseling Center and Peerless Puffin Giftshop. Janey Mae looks forward to continue participating in the thriving local art community and of collaboration opportunities to come. She plans to continue to explore the freedom and zest of surrealism and interpreting music, poetry and symbolic concepts through primarily oil painted pieces.

To inquire about collaboration, publication or commissions, go to contact.

For purchasing of available work, go to store.