Jaquith Ann Travis
Mission Statement – Why I Paint
I paint for so many reasons it’s hard to pin down. I love trying to capture the movement of a flower in the process of opening, a fleeting expression on a person’s face during those moments when they are within themselves, not thinking anyone is watching. I love to see interaction between people and people, people and nature and within nature itself and watching on canvas as these moments come alive.
BIO
I was born in California and lived there until I was twelve. I am the oldest of four kids. I roamed the orchards near our home with friends. I played in the rose garden rolling down the grassy slopes and climbing the tallest trees to see as far as I could see. Mother, a bird watcher, taught us to look under the rose bushes for nests and baby birds. Our family vacationed at Sea Bright near Santa Cruz and the ocean, or high in the Sierra Mountains at Shaver Lake
(I loved these mountains so that my first job was higher in the Sierra Mountains as a waitress when I was seventeen. When I was twelve, we moved to Wisconsin. There I discovered a different kind of landscape. I learned to love the cold, snowy winters, humid, hot summers, thunderstorms, and the wheat and dairy farms. When Father was transferred back to California in my teens we lived in the Oakland hills across the Bay from San Francisco, where I finished high school. I went on to study Art at San Francisco State University and enjoy the sounds, the sights, the compelling ideas, the controversies, and the devotion to new ideas and philosophies. While going to college I met people from all over the world, heard musical languages, and had classmates and friends of all ages. After graduation I went to work (and play) in the Big City. After about ten years, I met and married my husband.
Soon after we were married, and bought our first home, my new husband and I were transferred to Kentucky where we saw a new and different part of the United States. Here, we traveled back roads that went on and on, where we never knew. We saw the Tennessee Mountains, the beginnings of a tornado that never quite manifested, the tobacco fields, and horse farms. When we moved back to California we bought a small house in a small town outside of San Francisco, lived there until the traffic on the coastal highway made driving anywhere out of town too difficult.So we did some looking, and found Idaho in 1980. Except for an exceptional year in Illinois just outside Chicago, we have lived here in Idaho ever since. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities and incredible experiences I have had, for my family, for those years of exposure to different areas of the United States and the deep love of nature with it’s wondrous variety these experiences have imbued in me, for the many wonderful people I’ve met along the way, for the broad, rich and varied education I’ve received both in and out of schools, and most of all to her husband and son for being who they are.
I must mention here, that everywhere we went, I studied art. Art was part of my grade school curriculum. I took art as an elective all through high school, both in Wisconsin and in California. In college I studied art. I still study art. I will always study art. I hope, somehow, to give to others through the language of art the wonder, the passion I feel for the living, for the natural world, and the peace that nature gives me each and every day. The colors, the sounds, the constant movement, and the rich, exciting and wondrous variety that changes from day to day that being alive brings to us all is why I paint.
EDUCATION
Jaquith started her art studies in grade school and continued studying art as an elective
through high school and as a major in college.
- San Francisco University: 1959–1962
- Joe Bohler workshop presented by the Coeur d’ Alene Art Association: 1986
- North Idaho College: 2001-2003
- Positive Strokes Art School and Gallery: 2004–2005 Several workshops with Patsy Parsons at the Corbin Art Center, and at the
- Blanchard Arts Center: 2008, 2009, 2010
- Catherine Gill and Bob Phinney workshop presented by the Coeur d’ Alene Art Association: 2010