Artist Roster

Jill Althouse-Wood is an artist and a writer living and working in the artist colony of Arden, Delaware, just north of Wilmington.  A native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Althouse-Wood earned her BFA of Fine Arts from the University of Delaware and began her professional life as a designer of high-end fabrics at a jacquard mill in Pennsylvania. The textile design studio where she worked was a rich training ground, giving her insight into color, texture, and pattern that informs the art she does today. Concurrent to this job, Althouse-Wood wrote in her off-hours--blogging as MortalMom, writing essays and articles for local magazines, and eventually authoring the novel: Summers At Blue Lake.  After leaving the textile industry, Althouse-Wood sought a visual medium to fill the void and turned to painting textured portraits and landscapes. She paints on dark canvases because she likes starting with the dark and bringing her subjects "into the light."  Since moving to her home adjacent to the Sherwood Forest of Arden, her art and writing have taken on the rhythms of her surroundings. She paints forest and nature scenes in various degrees of abstraction and as backdrops for archetypal figures that represent timely societal issues. Her writing, too, is rooted in this place. She writes about the inspirational people and happenings of Wilmington for blogs such as INWilmington and magazines like Out & About.   Althouse-Wood further promotes art and writing through transformational journaling workshops she facilitates in schools, community centers, women's shelters, libraries and other organizations.