Jane Adams is an abstract painter whose work is grounded in the dynamic interplay of colour, form, rhythm, and memory. Working primarily in acrylics, her practice synthesizes gestural abstraction with subtle nods to geometric structure and the influences of music and sound. Adams’s compositions often have a lyrical quality, balancing energetic mark-making with carefully considered spatial relationships. Her visual language bridges the sensory experience of auditory phenomena with visual form, an approach that imbues her work with a sense of movement and emotional depth.
Born and raised in Vancouver, Adams trained at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) from 1962–1965, studying with notable instructors including Jack Shadbolt, Don Jarvis, Roy Kiyooka, and Orville Fisher, before furthering her studies in London at the Slade School of Art in 1965. Her first solo exhibition was mounted in 1973 at Vancouver’s Bau-Xi Gallery, and she has since exhibited widely across Canada. Adams’s work is held in numerous corporate, private, and public collections, most notably the National Art Bank, and has been featured in thematic exhibitions, including Order from Chaos: B.C. Binning and Jane Adams at the West Vancouver Art Museum.
About I Travel West:
This painting demonstrates Jane Adams’ layered, mixed-media approach, combining gestural abstraction with graphic, illustrative elements. The surface is built through washes, scraping, and overpainting, creating a weathered ground over which sharply defined black-and-white geometric bands form a triangular structure, setting up a striking contrast between loose, painterly passages and crisp linear pattern. Stencil-like moth and insect imagery hovers across the composition, while small, brightly colored geometric shapes punctuate the central space. The work seems to explore themes oftransformation and perception, balancing organic and constructed systems: the insects suggest metamorphosis and ephemerality, while the bold striped forms read as pathways or perceptual frameworks that both guide and disrupt the viewer’s gaze. The luminous yellow field and atmospheric blues evoke landscape or memory without resolving into representation, creating a dynamic tension between chaos and order, nature and geometry.
In Adams’ own words, “(This work) is very much influenced by the paintings of Jack Shadbolt who was my painting instructor for three years. I followed his use of the black and white direction signal as I read it in one of his paintings and adapted the same idea to tell the story of my move from Montreal to Winnipeg in 1981. You can see Winnipeg on the horizon.”
For all you deep art divers out there.
Artist’s Instagram.
More info (with artist talk) on West Vancouver Art Museum’s 2023 exhibition – Order from Chaos: Jane Adams and BC Binning.
Tour Jane Adams’ studio on Granville Island: Curated Tastes | Vancouver Art Tours on Instagram
Emily Carr University article on Jane Adams.
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