Jan Wade (artist)

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Jan Wade (born 1952) is a Canadian artist known for mixed-media work—assemblage, painting, sculpture and textiles. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in a Black Canadian community. Her father’s family descends from enslaved people who came from Virginia, and her mother’s family is European. The stories and traditions from her grandmother, great-grandmother, and the Stewart Memorial Church shaped her art—spiritual singing, quilting and storytelling.

Wade studied at an arts-focused high school and the Ontario College of Art and Design, graduating with honours in 1976. She moved to British Columbia in 1979, living in Gibsons before settling in Vancouver in 1983, where she made art through the years in studios and galleries. Her solo exhibitions include Sanctified/Soul Art (McMaster Museum of Art, 2001), Epiphany (Walter Phillips Gallery, 1994) and Jan Wade: Soul Power (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2021–2022). Her Vancouver show was the first solo by a Black woman at the gallery in its nearly 100-year history. She also participated in the first Johannesburg Biennale in 1995. Travels to Cuba in 1993–1994 exposed her to Santeria and Black diasporic culture.

Wade has held artist residencies at the Banff Centre (1994), the Bellagio Center (2004) and the Elsewhere Living Museum (2015). She is represented by Mónica Reyes Gallery in Vancouver and Richard Saltoun Gallery in London and Rome. Her 2022 Blood in the Soil and the solo Vancouver Art Gallery show earned her the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation.