Jan Wade

Jan Wade (born 1952) is a Canadian artist known for her work in mixed-media assemblage, painting, sculpture and textiles. Wade draws inspiration from her personal history as a Black Canadian woman with a mixed cultural background. In 2022 her solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery was the first by a Black female artist in the institution's near 100-year history .

Biography Jan Wade grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, in a close-knit Black community. Her father's family was descended from formerly enslaved people who migrated from Virginia to Canada in the early 20th century, and her mother's family background is European. Wade cites her paternal grandmother and great-grandmother as formative cultural influences, as well as the local African Methodist Episcopal Church, Stewart Memorial Church, where she first encountered Black diasporic traditions such as spiritual singing, quilting and communal storytelling. Wade attended an arts-focused high school in Hamilton and went on to the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, in 1972. She graduated with honours in 1976 and moved to British Columbia in 1979, first to Gibsons and eventually to Vancouver in 1983. She lived for many years in the city's Strathcona neighbourhood, holding independent shows and sales at her studio in between residencies and formally-organized exhibitions at galleries and art museums. Prophecy, 1993-2020, collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery Epiphany, 1990-2021, private collection Church and State, 1990-2020, collection of Vancouver Art Gallery Memory Jug, 2016, Collection of Surrey Art Gallery

Awards Wade was honoured with a VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts in 2022.