Jan Wagstaff

If you listen closely, you can see more and learn more.

Distant Forest

Oil on Canvas / 30 × 30 in. / $2,600

Passing Cloud

Oil on Canvas / 18 × 18 in. / Sold

About the artist

A native Californian, Jan Wagstaff was born and raised in Larkspur, in Marin County — and learned to paint as a young girl by copying the watercolors of her grandfather, a San Francisco artist and architect.

She earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in textiles at Oakland’s California College of the Arts, then spent eight years directing a progressive textile department at California State University, Chico, combining weaving with painting on woven canvases.

She also studied and danced classical ballet until her early twenties.

In 1983 she stepped away from teaching to design women’s clothing under her own label, JWag & Co., in Carmel, before returning to teach drawing and painting at York School in Monterey. She has served as board president of both the Cultural Council for Monterey County and the Carmel Art Association, where she has been an Artist Member since 1996.

For over four decades her paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and collected privately and publicly around the globe, earning residencies, grants, fellowships and prizes along the way.

Her imagery comes primarily from nature, rendered in oil on canvas: marshland grasses, aspen canopies, birds in flight, waterways and reflections.

My work is about seasons, sounds, texture, movement and shapes. It is about blending colors, subtleties of light and dark, and things near and far.

In her words

“As I observe the natural world, I am ever conscious of how I am experiencing it – how all of my senses play a part in my perception. My work is about seasons, sounds, texture, movement and shapes. It is about blending colors, subtleties of light and dark, and things near and far. About seeing and celebrating the ordinary such that it becomes extraordinary.

My paintings are visual entertainment but even more, I hope they encourage viewers to recall places that hold special meaning to them.”

— Jan Wagstaff