The Cornwall Library is delighted to present New Pathways, a free exhibit of the latest, transformed work of artist Jane Bevans in a display of gloriously abstract oil paintings. The artist’s reception is on May 6, from 5 until 7, and requires registration at https://cornwalllibrary.org/events/. The show continues until June 25.

For those only familiar with Bevans’s previous work, which was unapologetically figurative—still lifes, the human figure, and the occasional portrait—her new work will be a surprise. As she says, “After a lifetime of creating representational art, I jumped down the rabbit hole and came out on the abstract side.”

Bevans’s artistic transformation came recently, during the Covid epidemic, when “something about the isolation of that first year made me want to stop copying the outside. The transition to abstraction allows me free exploration of color, shape, texture, juxtaposition, and all of the other features of painting.” She says that she is enjoying the freedom her new style has given her, and it shows.

She grew up in New York and attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan where, in her senior year, she entered the Art in Opera contest of the Opera Guild in America with a painting of Carmen. The painting was exhibited at the IBM Gallery in New York and became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. What followed in her life were exhibits, awards, and her paintings in many homes around the world, as well as raising an artistic family and dabbling in law. Nowadays she divides her time between New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut.

She has exhibited in many galleries around the country. Recognition of includes the Empire Award from Catherine Lorillard Wolfe; the Grumbacher Award from the Pastel Society of America; and multiple awards from Allied Artists.

Cornwall Library
30 Pine Street
Cornwall, CT 06753

Events