I’m Jann Alexander, Creative Professional. Explore and shop here for my art and photography, including Vanishing Austin prints and poster; read my blog on creativity, Pairings, where I examine art, writing, and photography in Texas and beyond. Indulge in time travel with me and learn more about my upcoming historical novel.
I find my ideas in exploring and recording life’s details—as I’ve done in writing my Dust series historical novel, Unspoken, and its predecessor, A Habit of Hiding.
My photography focus is the scenic gumbo that is my Vanishing Austin series, and the many other thematic photography collections I’ve created. In my paintings, I capture the colors of the American southwest and Mexico on the Mission Trail.
I bring it all together at JannAlexander.com, where my words and art meet tech.
Words make art and photos better. And who doesn’t like a good story?
Art + Photo + Words = Pairings
My habit of examining the details has informed my lifelong zeal for storytelling.
As a storyteller, I paint with words. As a pictureteller, I pair my photos with words. When I look at the details, I imagine scenarios.
I’ve re-imagined lives in a novel based on real events, where two women battle small-town bias in the rural Texas Panhandle in A Habit Of Hiding (get in touch to read an excerpt as I seek a publisher). One woman is grieving her hidden regrets when she finds herself a sudden widow after 30 years; the other is struggling to single-parent with an unplanned pregnancy and limited resources. They’ll have to confront their habits of hiding to find their inner strengths, and unexpected gifts, on their transformative paths.
Like time traveling? I do, too. I love the discovery of what’s past but still present. I’m drawn to historic, retro and vintage things as though I have an ancient karma. And I love the irresistible scenic gumbo that is Austin, Texas, so I chronicle it with photos and words as it does a vanishing act. I call it Vanishing Austin. When I hit the road, it’s to indulge in a favorite pastime, Time Travels.
Can you imagine, as I do, how places dissolve and evolve? I’m fascinated by the era when the Spanish traveled north through Mexico and New Mexico, building mission churches as they conquered. Painting and photographing the mission churches is part of my journey to understand what once was. It’s my Mission: Mexico.
Explore my art, photos and words here, and shop online here.
Are you captivated by light? I am. I study light: the way it plays, bounces, delineates, colors, dances and defines by its abundance, or lack thereof. I photograph places and things that seem painted by light, clarified by pattern or form and shape. They’re my Lightscapes.
I take comfort in themes, finding them over and over in my art, my writing and my life. They help me make order out of an expansive creative world. But I’m a fan of chaotic intervention, too, and things that defy my neat categories.
Paintings and photographs are less than whole without words.
Paintings and photographs are less than whole without words. So I show and tell about all of this, and more—what inspires me, why I photograph what I do, how I make pictures and paintings, where creativity lives and breathes in me, and in everyone, and what goes with art (everything) in Pairings :: Art + What Goes With It.
Being in nature is essential to creativity (certainly to mine, and likely to yours, too) so it’s a constant lure for me. The scenes and details that I paint, and photograph, find their way into my Naturescapes and into my Flower Power collection.
I am awed by technology today. I have a love-hate relationship with it. It make so much possible, yet it makes so much commotion in my mind. I cannot resist the engagement with strangers who become community, thanks to our common agendas. I live to try out all the latest tech tools and tricks, and all things Apple. But such complexity makes me crave simplicity, too, to make space for creativity. I try to make sense of it by writing about it in Pairings. —Jann Alexander