Janet Jones’ painting practice focused on the urban world as a place shaped by surveillance, glowing technologies, and the constant movement of information through invisible signals. Her abstractions grew from a sharp, feminist reading of modernist painting and pressed against its limits through recessional depth, saturated colour, and a sense of motion that refused the idea of the canvas as self-contained.
The five paintings included in Dazzle Days come from the MacLaren’s collection. Installed vertically like stacked windows in a skyscraper, their smooth surfaces open onto distorted reflections of a world increasingly reshaped by technology. These scenes hover between the familiar and the distant. Each one holds a glowing atmosphere shaped by architecture, illumination, and data, and even her earliest works seem to look toward a future defined by an intensifying technological presence.
Janet Jones (1952-2025) was born in Montreal, and studied painting and photography at Concordia University with Guido Molinari and Yves Gaucher. She received her MFA from York University and her PhD in Art Theory and Criticism from New York University, where her thesis focused on Clement Greenberg and the Artist/Critic Relationship. She taught in the Department of Visual Art at York University, where she served as Chair and Director of the MFA/PhD Program.
Her paintings have been exhibited across Canada and internationally in Los Angeles, New York, England, Germany, France, and China. Significant exhibitions include The Dream Machine at Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Montréal (2017); Playtimes at Katzman Contemporary, Toronto (2015); and DaDa Delirium, a national touring exhibition accompanied by a critical catalogue (2011).
