Four Winds Studio
Oakville, California

She believes that…“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Breezes flow freely through doorways on each of the four faces of the hilltop studio painter Nan Grand-Jean designed and built for herself here.  Grand-Jean, the architect, fashioned structures with unimpeded views in each direction. “This places the building on the axis with endless possibilities,” she explains. “I want to see as far as possible without the building impeding my view.” Grand-Jean, the painter, embraces light and wind as partners in the artistic process.

Now, the paintings that fill the walls of both studio and home are energetic and incandescent.  In this painter’s world, light is omnipresent. “To me composition seems hackneyed.  It’s run its course and I prefer composition by chance; wind often locates the elements of the paintings. My interest is in moving my ego aside, in giving my energy to the canvas and then letting the wind determine the composition. That which is spiritual is not visible to us, but by allowing the elements to work, by getting out of the way, maybe we can just a glimpse of realities unknown to us." From the surrounding landscape she gathers twigs, branches, leaves, an entire rose bush that morph into ancient alphabets and moving organic elements in her work.

An accomplished architect, it seems there was always a painter incubating inside Grand-Jean. Finally, 12 years ago IDEO Founder David Kelley helped her understand that her passion for art was eclipsing her love of architecture. A building or two later she wound down her architecture practice and took up a new life. Grand-Jean has maintained the discipline of painting in solitude four days a week for over ten years. In the last year she has sold many of her paintings.
-Pamela Hunter

Artist Statement

I paint what I want to discover. I paint what is mysterious to me. I paint endlessly—I can never stop looking for & finding ways to demonstrate, in paint, on canvas, what I experience & what I wonder about. I experience all of life as a unity, but also as random. I see light in & around every animate & inanimate object. I am conversing with my experience—I am not so much conversing with my viewer.

I have painted alone in my studio for 12 years, full time, in an effort to find ways of painting that I respect & that excite me—I hope to do this for another 30-40 years.