Jane Wiles, artist and founder of the Wiles Gallery in Bathurst, died on Tuesday, 24 September 2013.
Jane Wiles, artist and founder of the Wiles Gallery in Bathurst, died on Tuesday, 24 September 2013.
She was unforgettable – tall, vivacious, bold and beautiful, she lit up a room with her presence.
A forthright and generous friend to many, but above all, a person of great courage, faith and determination who surmounted adversity in her life and inspired courage in others.
Jane was born in 1946 to Lucy and Norman Mullins, farmers in Salem, who separated when she was very young.
Her mother moved to the Transkei where she took up painting to support her two daughters.
Jane spoke of hours spent ‘in Transkei river beds and trading stores’, while Lucy painted the people and the landscape.
In 1954, Lucy married Brian Wiles, son of the artist WG Wiles, and they established a gallery on Leisure Isle in Knysna. There Jane developed an abiding love for small boats, fishing and seascapes.
Jane attended Collegiate School for Girls where she matriculated. In 1964 she went to Rhodes University, where she became a ‘drummie,’ broke hearts, and majored in fine art, switching to psychology when she found the art department uncongenial.
She went on to do Honours in English literature. The creative arts and the human psyche were to be her enduring passions.
In 1969 Jane became a lecturer at the University College of Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and shortly thereafter married Tony Voss, Professor of English.
Two children, Lucy and Ben, followed. The family then moved to Pietermartizburg where, frustrated by domesticity, Jane opened a Black Sash office, hiked the Drakensburg and studied drama at the University of Natal.
In 1979, after the break-up of her marriage, Jane took up lecturing posts, first at the University of Fort Hare and thereafter at the University of Zululand where she was also involved in the Community Law Project.
She was a passionate and memorable teacher who could breathe life into a text.
Throughout her adult life, Jane had painted in a desultory way, but it was not until the death of her partner, and latterly husband, Lorenzo de Neuilly Rice, in 1994 that she gave up lecturing and committed herself whole-heartedly to painting.
Describing her work, poet Don Maclennan wrote of ‘her love of light, tranquillity, the sensual susurration of the sea.’
In 2000 Jane moved from KwaZulu-Natal to Johannesburg to run personal transformation workshops. Her success in this venture was interrupted by the diagnosis of breast cancer in 2003.
With characteristic resilience, Jane embraced this challenge.
After surgery and chemotherapy she moved to Bathurst where she built the Wiles Gallery, took up bowls and became an active member of the local community.
She started a cancer support group where she gave both succour and courage to those living with the illness.
Jane leaves Lucy and Ben, and three grandchildren, Alastair, Lyndall and Scarlett.
