About The ARTIST

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I am Jane Mortimore, a nomadic artist embracing a nomadic lifestyle, roaming the Southwestern United States with my little dog Chia in a luxurious 80-square-foot Class B van —the outdoors is my studio. I carry my outdoor studio and art supplies in a 5x8-foot cargo trailer that I tow behind the van, creating a compact, mobile atelier that travels with me wherever the road leads. Each mile imprints pigment, memory, and mood, while the landscape of red rock, salt flats, and scorching desert light serves as both subject and studio.

In this captivating environment, I paint wildlife with a vitality that blends reverence and spontaneity. The subjects—elusive critters, birds, and desert companions—ground my work in place, while my backgrounds unfold as bold, abstract mappings of atmosphere, wind, and horizon. My practice embraces acrylic, pastel, and watercolor, with each medium offering its own pulse: the crisp clarity of acrylics captures the momentary blaze of movement; soft, dreamlike pastels convey the hush between heat and shade; and the luminous washes of watercolor evoke the wide open sky. I am drawn to how color translates heat shimmer, dust, and the quiet urgency of survival into emotion—how a crescent of coyote fur or the arc of a hawk wing becomes a symbol of resilience within the expansive, often sparse landscapes of the Southwest.

The road is my teacher. I chronicle journeys through paintings that are at once intimate and expansive—micro studies of animal forms set against skies that dissolve into expressive fields. This process mirrors my nomadic lifestyle: field sketches, followed by layers built in the trailer-towed studio, with final touches refined as the next destination calls. This rhythm echoes the way memory travels—frayed at the edges, vivid in color, and always moving forward.

On YouTube, under Like a Tumbleweed, I share the living narrative of this lifestyle—the detours, the sunsets, and the small rituals that sustain a wandering artist. The videos are conversations about finding stillness in motion, foregrounds that speak through abstraction, and the courage to follow curiosity into unfamiliar terrain.

Ultimately, my Southwestern art honors the wildness of the region and the resilience of its inhabitants—human and animal alike—while inviting viewers into a sense of motion, wonder, and contemplative color. If my wildlife paintings enter your space, I hope they feel like a breeze from a distant mesa: familiar, transformative, and just a little wild.

Please visit the Gallery and take a look at my art.