A morning in the studio with Jane Evans

We spend a morning in the studio with Jane Evans, one of the most influential artists of Chinese brush painting in the UK.

Jane studied Chinese Brush Painting at the Chinese Artists’ Guild and the Philippine Chinese Art Center in the Philippines, studying with Chen Bingsun, Hau Chiok and Sy Chiu Hua. After returning to Britain, Jane continued to develop her painting, exploring the versatility of Chinese techniques and materials by using them in adventurous ways. Drawing on Eastern and Western ideas about light, space and perspective, she has evolved a highly original style, creating colourful abstracted paintings that combine both aesthetic traditions. She is Honorary Co-president of the Chinese Brush Painters Society.

We enter Jane’s studio on a sunny April morning. The sun gleams through the treetop window and alights upon stacks of piled Chinese paper above our heads. “There are so many different sorts of Chinese paper,” Jane tells us. She explains how a good alternative for people learning to paint is newsprint, as it absorbs water in a similar way. “I used to make my students go to Heffer’s art shop and buy rolls to practice on,” she says, “but it was a problem if they then did something they really liked, and couldn’t back it. But from the point of view of practising, it’s the nearest thing you can use for unsized paper.”

We admire her studio as Jane introduces us to her materials. She uses ornamental cuboidal weights to keep her paper flat on her felt-covered painting table, as the paper needs to be kept as flat and smooth as possible. Her brushes are kept within reed brush rolls, although in the past, she used to use placemats to improvise brush rolls on a budget. The difference between western brushes and Chinese brushes are notable. Jane tells us that, “unlike a western brush, where the hairs go down inside and are trapped in place, with these, [Chinese brushes are] glued together as a head and then the head is glued inside there.  The way Chinese brushes are made allows them to hold a lot more liquid than equivalent sized Western brushes, which means that they can be loaded with several colours or ink tones at once.  However, you shouldn’t close brushes up in something where they can’t air dry, otherwise the glue dissolves in not that long. Likewise, you don’t leave them in pots when they’re wet. That’s why some brushes have loops for hanging up to dry.” True to form, we can see copious brushes hung up to dry on the fringes of her desk.

Jane’s paintings often feature natural landscapes and assorted flora and fauna. “I went through a phase where I did lots of still life. An ongoing theme is small birds, but that’s partly because when I’m teaching, I’m teaching people how to do them and it’s become a bit of an ongoing speciality.” She describes how one of her favourite styles is what she calls “accidental landscapes.” This involves throwing ink at some paper, looking at it, and seeing what you think you can make it into. Using a different dampness of paper produces interesting and different effects. Much of her work is inspired by the landscapes of France, which Jane and her husband Martin visit frequently. When it comes to the actual painting of these subjects, Jane prefers to paint in her studio. Alongside keeping the landscape in her memory, she says of her process, “I do take photographs as well. And I do sketch too. Sometimes I turn sketches into paintings, and sometimes they just stay as sketches.” All around the walls of her studio are collages of small sketches and postcards of such scenes.

Here, we begin to deep dive a little more into the philosophy and teaching behind Chinese brush painting. Jane tells us a couple of apocryphal stories, which she uses to illustrate the difference between western and Chinese painters to her students.  The first involves a Chinese painter and a western painter both asked to paint a duck. “They both went down to the local duck pond. The westerner took his sketchpad and his sketch pens and spent two days sketching the ducks, and on the third day, he took his easel and his paints and his brushes, and he painted what was in effect a portrait of one of the ducks. The Chinese painter sat there and watched the ducks for two and a half days, and on the last afternoon, he went back and painted a duck. So he was after the chi of duck, basically.” She also tells us another one she likes, about a young man who was very keen on koi carp. “There was a famous painter who was famous for fish paintings, so he went and said, “I would like to commission a painting.” “Yes, yes,” said the main, “come back in a year’s time.” So the young man thought, blimey, I know he’s famous but flipping heck, he must be busy. Anyway, a year later, he knocked on the door of the painter and said, “I’ve come for my painting.” “Oh yes, yes, come in, sit,” the artist said. He laid out a piece of paper on his felt, got out his ink and his ink stick and his ink stone, and ground some ink and he picked up a brush and he painted a carp. And the other man said, “well, that’s absolutely perfect, brilliant, but I’ve been here ten minutes! Why have I waited a whole year?” And without saying anything, the painter got up and went to a cupboard in the corner of the room and opened the door, and hundreds of paintings of carp fell out. He’d been practising for a year!”

Much of Jane’s art is linked to her teaching. She describes the way that learning Chinese brush painting can be very structured in terms of progression. This is the idea that a student should begin by learning to paint plum blossom. The act of learning to paint this teaches them a lot of the basic techniques of Chinese brush painting. From here, a student would progress onto bamboo, which teaches them another round of techniques. In the same way, a student would cycle through orchid and chrysanthemum, and learning these four together provides most of the strokes and techniques you need to go onto any other subject. Jane demonstrates for us a painting of bamboo, which she explains is the best subject to start with to warm up. In several deft strokes with a carefully loaded brush, she paints the stems and swiftly fills in the leaves in dark and then in light ink. “I always think that bamboo is where calligraphy and painting come closest together, but also part,” Jane explains. “Because yes, the strokes are very calligraphic, but you don’t use the brush in the same way as a calligrapher.” In just a minute or two, Jane’s painting is complete and she stamps the corner with her custom carved Chinese seal.

Jane has taught many of her students for many years. “I’ve had some students more or less from the beginning of when I started teaching,” Jane explains. Many of her students have become friends. Some have gone on to teach Chinese brush painting themselves. She notes that a lot of people are attracted to learning Chinese brush painting techniques in order to improve their watercolour skills. However, this is not great news for Jane: “what I always say is that Chinese painting techniques are very useful for water colourists, but watercolour techniques are not very useful for Chinese painting.” In Jane’s opinion, a good Chinese brush is the most versatile painting tool ever invented.

Her own history with Chinese brush painting is a long and international one. Having lived in the Philippines for a few years, where she was not permitted to work because of Philippine law, she looked to take up some kind of practical art. When batik proved too hot and steamy with the Philippine climate, she turned to Chinese brush painting. From here, she was hooked. Her teaching led her to write several books about Chinese brush painting. At the time, there were not a lot of other books on the subject aimed at Western artists and publishers were under the impression that it might be too much of a specialised subject. But following the success of Jane’s first book, many more books on Chinese brush painting followed on.

Jane is now Honorary Co-president of the Chinese Brush Painters Society, alongside Qu Leilei. Qu Leilei is a very distinguished Chinese artist who also uses a Chinese brush to paint western topics and some other contemporary Chinese topics. In April 2022, Leilei described the “unique quality to the art of Jane Evans which stands out among the oriental painting community in the UK”:

[Jane] has taken traditional Chinese painting and made it her own blending oriental techniques with her own unique Western handwriting and mark making. This takes a certain amount of courage tenacity and imagination. In the learning of oriental painting it can actually be quite formulaic with countless examples of masters work, which one has to copy in order to grasp the techniques and it can stand as just a case of ‘ paper copy paper ‘ as is said in Chinese. Jane is one of few Western Chinese painters who has not entirely done this and has been true to her identity as an English artist.  Blending her skill in observational painting and drawing she has taken the expressive power of the Chinese brush and incorporated it in to her Western vision. In Chinese art what is most valued is the combination of painting from nature, inspiration from the old masters and expression from the artists own heart. Jane is working in exactly this way. She has my deepest admiration for this.

The Chinese Brush Painters Society has been going since the early 1970s and has several hundred members. Every year, there is a nation-wide meet up and a quarterly newsletter is distributed which features assorted paintings by society members.

Jane rinses out her brushes and we head downstairs from the treetop studio for cups of tea. Her paintings have also been printed onto mugs and postcards, alongside featuring in poetry anthologies. We will be presenting an exhibition of her work at Cam Rivers in early June 2022, featuring scenes from Cambridge and other landscapes. Keep an eye out on our social media for more information!

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 Check out Jane’s website

Exhibition open from 1st - 14th June - Tues, Weds, Thurs 12-5pm

Prints also available in the gallery and our online shop

Address: Cam Rivers Arts, 33 Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1QY