Jay Winter Collins

Oil Paintings

Jay Winter Collins is an award-winning regional artist and illustrator who paints happiness into being.  Much of her work since the beginnings of COVID has focused on home in a series of small paintings with minute details that are meant to be looked at closely.  She is currently working on a children's book, How Many Cats?, which features cats hidden in windows or landscaping of her paintings of homes and neighborhoods.  Many of these paintings are included in the show.   She is the illustrator of the book, Rhoda the Alligator, which was written by Governor Bob Graham.  She is happiest when painting in her studio, and that happiness radiates through her large body of work.

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Jay is the founding artist of Art Studios of Grace in Gainesville, FL.  She has been a professional artist since she was nine years old and participated in her first art festival.  The youngest artist in the University of Washington's annual art festival from age 9 - 13, she sold pen and ink drawings, going on to paint with oils as a teenager and into adulthood.  Currently, she works in high-flow acrylic applied with marker, which she calls "Drawing with Paint."  Her focus is on positivity, finding calm in patterns, detail, and vivid color.  As the survivor in a family of suicides, it is important to her that she is contributing only happiness with her artwork and she hopes that each piece provides for moments of contented mindfulness.