Award winning professional fine artist, Jan Busse works in oils, acrylics, watercolors, colored pencil, pastel, and clay. Her subjects are as varied as her media: landscapes, still lifes, and portraits.

Jan began her career in Fort Worth, Texas where she was a founding member of an elite group of artists at Forth Worth’s historic Stockyard’s Gallery. She has consulted with industry leaders Empire Berol and Grumbacher in new product development. Both firms display her work in their permanent collections.

The founder & owner of Renaissance Fine Art School in the Chicago, IL suburb of Lake Zurich, the school’s staff of 24 instructors and 500 students, offered a complete art curriculum of drawing, painting, and ceramics classes. While Jan sold the business in 2004 to pursue her own artistic career, she maintains a small number of serious students at her home studio, and still teaches workshops around the globe.

“When people ask my favorite medium, I’m hard pressed to answer. It’s like asking me to name my favorite child. Maybe because I’ve taught for so long and had to know a bit about all media, I love them all for their different properties. Oil is my first love and expresses my need for vibrant, pure color and heavy impasto application with lots of texture and movement. Pastels are fast – great for plein aire work -- and can be either delicate and ethereal, or vivid and spontaneous. While watercolor is the most challenging for me, I love to combine it with colored pencil, ink, or acrylics when I’m looking for realism and infinite detail. I see something I want to capture in paint and immediately see it in the medium best suited for the subject. Most importantly, I use the medium needed to interpret the mood of the piece.”

“Art, for me, is always about capturing moods. Moods are about light and color. With patience, skill and practice, good art can make this seem effortless and instinctive. I strive for this each time I stand before my easel.”