Jean Wallin Art

Jean Wallin grew up in northeast Arkansas where her artistic ability found little encouragement. At the age of nine, she was sent to live with her grandmother, who discouraged her determination to get a high school diploma. However, Wallin remained persistent and continued her education. When she turned 20, a friend gave her a paint set that sparked her interest in painting and she eventually took a six-month art class in Arkansas. She got married in 1967 and moved to Bangkok, Thailand, with her husband. She was exposed to a whole new culture there. Upon their return to Miami, Florida, Wallin began majoring in art education at the University of Miami. At that time, she appreciated Impressionists and Old Masters’ works and was turned off by Abstract Expressionists until she saw the work at a campus exhibition. The couple relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1977 and stayed there for several years while her husband was getting his Ph.D and later going through a divorce.

When Wallin was close to 40 and living in Ocala, Florida, she wanted to make a career as an artist. She began painting landscapes in oils. But while visiting a friend in Miami, she looked through his Southwest Art magazines and felt a yearning to return to the area. She spent six months studying art from a teacher in Arkansas. While visiting her sister in Illinois, Wallin met and married a man who worked for IBM. The couple lived in Chicago for five years until his transfer in 1986, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, at her insistence. After moving to New Mexico, she was exposed to all the other wonderful landscape painters and began to stray from landscapes. She started working with acrylics, rather than oils, and painting puzzle pieces that kept turning into female figures. She was beginning to trust her instincts. While creating these acrylic female figures, the artist never worked  with live models, rather she just idealized the woman. Recently, Wallin has been experimenting with bronzes and ceramics. She paints the ceramics with acrylics so that she can control the color process, but the sculptures are oil-based and turned into bronzes.