Her work sits mostly in figuration: portraits, cultural subjects, animals. A face turned slightly away from the light. Hands that have done a lifetime of work. The gold thread on a sari border, painted with the same attention as the woman wearing it. Whatever the subject, the interest is the same. Identity, and the way it shows on the surface of a person.

Born into an Indian family and raised in the UK, Jayna grew up holding two things at once: the language, food, colour and ritual of one culture, and the streets, schools and weather of another. Neither cancelled the other out. That double vision runs through the paintings. She is drawn to the moments where culture becomes visible, in dress, in ceremony, in the way someone holds themselves, and to the quieter fact that a person is never only one thing.

Her portraits of other cultures come from the same instinct rather than from distance. Having spent her life translating between two worlds, she is curious about how everyone else does it too. The animals sit alongside this work naturally, painted with the same directness she brings to faces, and with the same interest in presence rather than prettiness.

She works mainly in oils and acrylics, moving between the two depending on what a piece asks for.