Meet Jane Shoenfeld

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jane Shoenfeld. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jane below.

Jane, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

My own resilience comes partially from examples set by my parents, particularly my mother. She was not happy in her marriage but she sat at her Underwood typewriter every day and wrote short fiction that found publication in many magazines. Later she divorced my father, moved several times, went through psychoanalysis, and supported herself through her writing. To me being resilient means bouncing back from difficult circumstances to find new opportunities and meaning in life, particularly when life is not going as you planned! I hope that on a national level, our country and all of those who are targeted will be resilient. I am lending support to friends who are threatened with removal in my state of New Mexico. Although many aspects of growing up with a mother who had a lot to learn herself were extremely dissonant, I learned from her about resiliency.
Other examples from my past link synchronicity with resiliency. Synchronicity refers to apparent coincidences that create power and meaning. In my daily life, by noticing these alignments, I can sense where there is energy for me. This awareness folds into my resiliency.
An example from my life before I moved to New Mexico – My work is primarily in pastel. I’ve been working in this medium for 40 years. However I came to pastel out of a major disappointment. I had experienced a painful rejection in the area of my oil painting. I was devastated. Around the same time I was painting outdoors in a spot I loved in the park near where I lived. From behind me a small rock whizzed by my ear, narrowly missing my head and puncturing a hole in my canvas. I saw a group of boys running and someone nearby told me the one of the boys had thrown the stone. I still have that excellent painting with the hole in it! These two events happened close together in time. The rejection that was so disappointing, along with the rock whizzing past my ear, led me to stop using oil paint and to only work in graphite. I didn’t want to work from observation or to use paint any more after the experience in the park. Although I had developed my skills working from both the still life and landscape, I then worked in black and white and from a source that was entirely inner. Events that were excruciating became the source of positive change. When I went back to color after two years without it, I no longer wanted a brush and I began working in pastel. This movement – back and forth between representation and abstraction – back and forth between visual perception and internal necessity – has been and continues to be the story of the work I have been making for many years.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m both a visual artist and a poet. My office where I write is on the other side of my studio door. My art work is often in response to poetry and my primary medium is soft pastel. When I need to pause on a painting, I walk through that door and sit down at the keyboard to create in words. My work is created in series. The pastel painting in this photo is from a body of work that I made in response to political events. That I needed to create THIS particular series “came” to me while watching a newscast. The poem “The Second Coming” by WB Yeats poem flashed into my mind while hearing disturbing news. Yeats wrote this poem in 1919 shortly before the First World War. I created a painting in response to each line of Yeats’ poem. As I was working I repeated aloud the specific line of the poem that was inspiring me. The sounds of poetry connected me to another level that added “resonance” to my visual art. The painting in the book I am holding is from this series. This body of work (22 paintings in response to 22 lines from the poem) found its way to a major exhibit at the Visual Arts Center of a college here in Santa Fe. Although this sequence was inspired by political events, what was happening was nothing compared to what is happening to our country now in 2025. I don’t know what I can do through my art about all the firings, but we are in a very, very dangerous world now.
Other series include large, elongated landscapes (approx 40”x60”), and a body of work in response to a book of poetry on climate change, The Water Leveling With Us by Donald Levering. My recent paintings combine the ambiguity of abstraction with visual information associated with perception. This collection includes images of faces merging with the wild nature that surrounds my studio. HERE Gallery in Santa Fe exhibited this work along with the beautiful charcoal drawings of Katherine Meyers. Strata Gallery represents my artwork in New Mexico. I am a NYC transplant and have lived in Santa Fe for close to 38 years. I continue to exhibit in invitational shows in the Northeast.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Follow your instincts. Trust the desires or needs that persist and insist. Whether it is the change in medium that gradually led to a career in pastel or the need for a change in place, or the realization that I am ready to start a new series, I trust my instincts A line from “The Waking” by poet Theodore Roethke has been influential – I learn by going where I have to go.
My most major change regarding place was when I left NYC in the late 80’s. I had moved there to go to art school and lived there for many years. Then I visited the Southwest and two artist friends who had relocated to Taos and Santa Fe, NM. Back in the Northeast again, I attended a workshop and on a break, as the light of the setting sun settled on me, it became suddenly and immediately clear that I was leaving the noise and density of the city and moving to New Mexico. This transition was over a year in the making. Clarity had me resign from a job where I had to leave a pension behind. My persistence in working out the details made it happen. Although I love returning to NYC, and am amazed that I left behind a pension, I am glad I left when I did. I have lived in New Mexico for over 37 years now. Every day I am happy I live here. Following instincts, and the focus and commitment to make things happen are equally important. You will also find that you need to develop skills to make the things that you want to have happen go beyond the wanting to materializing in the real world. And yet. . . know that timing, action, and inaction are mysterious. So go for a walk and take in what nourishes you effortlessly.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

I have TWO! One is personal, one is “professional.” My number one personal obstacle is insomnia. I lose big parts of my day because when I lie down at night I can’t fall asleep. I’ve always dealt with insomnia, but in recent years my sleep issues have become more challenging. The daily news cycle adds stress also. My best solution has been a series of pieces I call my “Insomnia Paintings.” I go into my studio and work for an hour using mixed media, pastel and pencils on top of unsuccessful watercolors. Then I can usually go back to sleep.The other aspect that gets put on a back burner due to lack of time (due to a lack of sleep!) is a professional challenge. What is the next and best destination for my work? In this regard, I am enjoying time in between exhibits with no structure for shows coming up. I breathe freely. I work on pieces that seem unrelated. I love it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.janeshoenfeld.com
• Instagram: @janeshoenfeldart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jane.shoenfeld/

Image Credits

All photos by Jane Shoenfeld or by permission of the photographer