JANE ADAMS
Jane Coulthard Adams was born in Vancouver in 1943. During a winter spent in France with her mother (the award winning Canadian composer, the late Jean Coulthard), Adams met the sculptor Frances Gage, who directed her first formal lessons in the galleries of the Louvre. On her return to Vancouver she continued her studies in master classes given by the Belgian painter and muralist, Francoise Andre, and in 1960 she worked for a summer at the Banff School of Fine Arts with Charles Steigmann.
Adams’ first studies in England took place in 1961-62 when she enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art. From 1962- 66 she studied at the Vancouver School of Art with Jack Shadbolt, Don Jarvis and Orville Fisher, among others. These years were very much a part of the Vancouver “scene” as it developed in the Sixties says Adams, describing that “Peter Aspell once bought a horse into class so his students could draw it from life and Roy Kiyooka would read us poetry and then say “Now paint what I’ve just read you”. Adams then returned to England where she studied at the Ichbald School of Design in London. At this time, she came to the attention of British painter William Townsend, who invited her to work under his direction at the Slade School of Art. After returning to Canada in 1968, she met and married Andreas Poulsson, a National Film Board director and cameraman, and moved with him to Montreal where she remained for 20 years.
Adams’ first solo exhibition took place in 1973 at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver and she has continued to exhibit her work since then. By the mid 1970s she also began to collaborate with her mother on several music related projects. Among others, she illustrated the best selling series of educational music books “Music of Our Times” and completed the design tableaux for the three act opera “The Return of the Native”.
In 1990 Adams returned to Vancouver where she draws inspiration for her painting from the place that she lives. Alive with colour and motion, her most recent works capture the flowers, gardens and natural beauty and forms of the West Coast landscape.
PRINTMAKING
Beginning in 2008 I wanted to direct my paintings back to working with florals that I had been developing for many years until 2005 when I ventured into the very figurative Western Journey show. This time I wanted to find a much more contemporary way of expressing my ideas.In my search I began to carve some very simple images into rubber using black ink over acrylic colour and found the outcome very bold and graphic. With more experimentation I found I was able to embed a very fine rice paper directly into the acrylic paint and the paper virtually disappeared leaving a one of a kind print on canvas.
Every artist I feel at times must throw down all the previous processes to create a regeneration of ideas for fear of the work becoming somewhat prosaic. I have always remained faithful to the real image but using this new approach to the floral I am able to keep an expressionistic use of colour and yet venture into a very bold linear abstraction.
Some years ago I went to the Munch Museum in Oslo and saw for the first time the wonderful woodcuts of Edward Munch. Immediately upon returning home I began to carve and record my trip into a series of woodcuts. It has been very exciting to return to this earlier technique using older skills and tools to find I can cross mediums and introduce anew and contemporary look to my work..
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