Jane E. Skafte

Born in Chicago, IL / Works in Charlottesville, VA

BIO

Skafte earned a BFA in textiles from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Syracuse University. Her profession as a textile designer led her create surface design for various companies. She has produced museum reproductions for the Smithsonian in Washington DC, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA. Nature is always her source of inspiration. Her work is poetic rather than a literal, and she is always exploring complexity in pattern and color.

I have a profound appreciation for the environment, and draw from nature to create poetic subject matter, which I explore as pattern and a meditation on inner spaces. My recent body of watercolors explores botanical subjects through new palettes—exaggerated, filtered, and composed in magnified or cropped views. Rather than landscapes with directional horizons, I focus on upward views of trees, emphasizing the shapes between branches, leaves, and sky. These compositions are non-directional, inviting a more immersive and contemplative experience.