In recent years Jane Bazinet has emerged as an important American artist. Born in Basile, Louisiana, she began painting during the 60's. First exhibited in Scottsdale, Arizona, her paintings and prints soon found their ways into collections ( both public and private ) and galleries across the world.

Bazinet produced her first graphics in the early 80's. These limited edition serigraphs ( Dancers Ascent and Aft and Fro ) quickly sold out, as did larger subsequent editions.

Although Bazinet has worked in numerous mediums, deftly treating a variety of themes, she is best known for her lyrical figurative work which dwells at a mysterious crossroads between poetic realism and abstract expressionism. She has been recognized as an artist with an extremely personal style and technique which is at once romantic and contemporary.

Jane Bazinet studied at Arizona State University for five years and continued studying art thereafter as an apprentice under the able tutelage of several painters including Woody Payne, Merrill Mahafey, and Dorothy Fratt. While in Arizona, Bazinet began entering competitions and soon began accepting numerous awards. Yearning to practice her art outside of this competitive atmosphere, she decided to move on.

Her interest in the history of architecture led her to study Art History at San Francisco State University but the call of art pulled her on further to major in sculpture. All the while she continued to paint, watercolor was her favorite medium after all.

She then moved to England and studied etching in a small school in Putney. Finding her way to Wimbledon she met Mr. Israel, a teacher who had perhaps the greatest influence on her. It was here that her figurative work began to take root and grow to maturity.

Upon leaving England she moved to Houston and became an assistant to and shared a studio with Jose Perez. She soon began exhibiting her own work nationally and then worldwide.

When asked what influences she could cite in her work Bazinet responded, " Everything I do is influenced by my upbringing in Louisiana; for whatever reason I do it, however I do it, why I think, the things I eat, the cars I drive, the swamps I like, being adventurous. It has to do with some kind of freedom that influences everything you do - everything.

I would go other places and I found that no one was as happy as we were. When I left there everybody was unhappy to be a woman for some reason. They were out trying to be liberated and I thought I already was. No one ever told me there was anything wrong with being whatever I wanted to be. I don't like to paint unhappiness anymore. I think it's totally unnecessary.

Classical music influences me a lot. There's another dimension I go into when I'm working. It's like an out of body experience. Music carries me from here, with you, into that other dimension. Sometimes I don't even know Tm painting these. just happen.

I like working in series and I like doing the research for those series. I've done a series on Wagner's opera the Ring of the Neibelung and a series on Scherazade. Lately I've been thinking about New Orleans. Nothing heavy, just the thought of it and of the carnival. So I'm doing a series on the carnival now. Recently, while in Maine, l reread The Canterbury Tales. That will be my next series. Often I am drawn into a series.

In my early years as an artist I was painting soft feminine forms and I was dissatisfied with the lack of strength in my work. I was studying then under a wise and talented man. I remember telling him that I wanted to paint strongly; I wanted to paint like a man. My teacher smiled warmly and said, yes you should paint strongly, but not like a man. Rather, you should find that strength in your own femininity. That is what I have strived to do.