ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jan Sohl is forever becoming a landscape painter. She grew up watching her parents and grandparents make things and following them on their adventures up into South Dakota's Black Hills or over the prairies and mountains to the Yellowstone country.Those stories told by the magnificence of those landforms are significant in the compositions she builds into her paintings and drawings.  

Jan says, "I see something outside. I know this sounds crazy, but there's a flash of harmonic vibration in that scene, like a bright chord played by a symphony. The curtain goes up. Then the sketches and block-in are applied to find the way through the idea. The painting is built up, working the colors into the values. Then it seems the piece has to be deconstructed so the right harmonies balance with the necessary dissonance. And, if I let go, the music finds its symphony. It is preserved because it never comes again.”

Jan enjoys painting outside, ‘en plein aire’, whenever time is available. In September 2016, she participated in the 7th Annual South Park Plein Air Arts Celebration in Fairplay Colorado, where her pastel drawing, “Montgomery Falls Rapid,” won Best of Show. In the spring of 2017, Jan had a solo exhibition,"Essential Ground", at the Center for Western Studies at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. She has also participated in plein air paint-outs in the Black Hills and in the Harvey Dunn Plein Air Paint-Out in DeSmet SD.

​

A signature member of Artists of the Black Hills, Jan participates in this professional artist association’s events. Her work can be seen at Prairie Edge Trading Company and Galleries in downtown Rapid City, SD.