What started as a way to pass the time during lockdown has become a way of life for artist Jayne Ashenbury. Chrissy Harris finds out more
The box of watercolour paints had lay hidden in a cupboard for years, new and unopened. Retired teacher Jayne Ashenbury says she can’t remember when they were bought or why - but she’s glad that she found them.
Lifting the lid on that little tin of paints has revealed an incredible talent for watercolour art that even Jayne didn’t know she had.
‘I’m just as surprised as anyone else,’ she says, speaking from her Plymouth home where she is currently working on a mural of some wild thistles for a couple in Cornwall. It’s the latest in a steady flow of commissions that have come through via social media or word-of-mouth since Jayne started putting colour to canvas just a few months ago.
‘I found myself a little lost when the country ground to a halt at the end of March 2020,’ says Jayne, who had recently retired from her drama teaching career and was in the process of setting up her own tour guide business. Jayne had been through the training and had a diary full of bookings. ‘But then everything shut down,’ she says. ‘I realised being a tour guide wasn’t going to work.’
Almost as an enjoyable distraction, Jayne began painting, finding inspiration from the natural world to create beautiful floral works of art, before moving on to landscapes and seascapes. ‘I’ve always loved art - I did it for A-Level - but I‘ve never really done anything useful with it and certainly never sold anything,’ says Jayne, who has three children, aged 27, 25 and 17. ‘I absolutely loved it from the start. There’s so much that’s not good – not everything you do is amazing. But some of it I look at and think: wow. I did that!’
Jayne’s work captures flora and fauna in an abstract and stylised way. She recently created a stunning bamboo watercolour acrylic mural at a house down the road in Stonehouse, Plymouth and was then called back to do another, this time an underwater scene.
Jayne also makes digitally produced cards from her work, which includes Plymouth’s waterside scenery.
She is now painting, exhibiting and selling her art in local shops, as well as hosting workshops, including a collaborative art and food session with Purdy’s Punjabi Cuisine, called Painting and Punjabi.
‘It’s all going wonderfully’, says Jayne. ‘I’ve also started painting scenery from the moors, which is completely different from flowers,’ she says, full of praise for the support she’s had from the local community and other artists in the area. ‘I’m dabbling in all sorts and I absolutely love it; I’m so happy,’ adds Jayne. ‘I’m excited to get up every day and start. It’s like playing full-time.’
Painting a new profession
Jayne explains how her creative business has grown:
‘A few lovely friends saw my pictures and encouraged me to have cards made, to sell. I wanted to use a local printer, so I went to Adapt Graphics in Peverell, Plymouth, and had 100 cards printed at the end of June.
‘I sold the first lot the same day! I called the printer and he was more than happy to print a second set immediately, and so it has grown…
Since then, I have sold some super prints of the originals, created original pictures in both watercolour and acrylic and branched out to create murals.’
