The Art of Noticing: In Conversation with Jo Rance

The British landscape painter behind this season’s postcard on painting outdoors, overgrown paths and the small things worth paying attention to.

There is a particular sort of summer evening that feels hard to improve upon. The heat has begun to lift, the birds are still singing, and the garden is waiting for its last drink of water before bed.

For landscape painter Jo Rance, it is one of the small moments that brings the most joy.

“At this time of year, I’ll wander out into the garden and water the plants as the sun is going down,” she says. “It feels good to know I’m saying goodnight to the day, but also that the plants are having a well-earned drink.”

Jo is the artist behind the garden scene we have commissioned for this seasons postcard, which is currently be tucked into our parcels for the coming months. Full of greenhouse glass, growing crops and the gentle busyness of things being tended, it feels like a little celebration of the garden at its most generous.

Her work is rooted in the British countryside and its changing seasons. She is drawn to the rhythm of the landscape: what appears, disappears and returns again, often while we are busy looking elsewhere.

“The countryside is still my one true love,” she says. “My practice has developed in terms of scale and subject matter, but my core reason for painting has definitely stayed the same.”

For Jo, much of the pleasure comes from being outdoors. She often takes her sketchbook with her, finding inspiration not simply in the view, but in the experience of being there.

“I love painting outside,” she says. “There’s always endless bounty when you’re outdoors, and being in the weather and the elements only adds to the experience of what you’re making.”

It is not always the obvious view that catches her attention, either. Often, it is the middle bit. A narrow path leading somewhere unknown. A channel of trees. A clearing that makes you wonder what might be around the bend.

“I love tree bark and blossom, blades of grass moving in the wind, and collections of plants and trees that I can turn into a patchwork of colour and pattern,” she says.

It is perhaps this eye for the in-between that gives Jo’s work its warmth. Her paintings do not feel like grand statements about the landscape. They feel more like an invitation to slow down and look again.

On her walks lately, there has been plenty to notice. The hedgerows are full and spilling over, familiar paths are becoming more adventurous, and the cygnets on her local river are growing up quickly.

“It’s a hazy but abundant time of year outside,” she says. “There’s almost always something wonderful to see.”

This is a useful way of thinking about high summer, particularly when the garden is looking more enthusiastic than orderly. The tomato plants will have ideas of their own. The grass will need cutting just as soon as you have cut it. Somewhere beneath the tangle, though, there will be something ripening, flowering or quietly getting on with it.

Although Jo finds inspiration throughout the year, spring is the season she returns to most often.

“I could talk about my love of spring until the cows come home,” she says. “I adore the hope in the air, the lighter mornings, and the first signs of life after a dormant few months.”

There are bulbs planted months earlier finally having their moment, blossom appearing where there was bare branch, and that familiar feeling that the year is beginning again. It never gets old.

For now, though, we are happy to be in the fullness of summer: watering the pots, taking the longer route home, and noticing what is growing around us. Jo hopes her work might offer a small version of that feeling.

“I always hope my drawings and paintings can spark a little joy,” she says. “The feelings they provoke are sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes unexpected, but almost always light.”

Whether it finds its way onto a kitchen shelf, a pinboard or into a handwritten note to someone else, we hope it brings a small moment of pleasure with it.