JANA WOOD

ARTIST BIO

Jana Wood is a New Zealand/Aotearoa-based visual artist renowned for her richly expressive paintings that explore deep connections between land, memory, ecology and cultural identity. Of mixed Māori (Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Ngāti Kikopiri) and Pākehā (Scottish/Irish/English) heritage, she lives and works in Te Pūaha o Waikato (Port Waikato), where the shifting coastal landscape and elements of whenua (land), awa (river), and moana (sea) profoundly influence her practice. Her work navigates the liminal space between abstraction and figuration, guided by colour, energy, and an embodied understanding of place.

Wood completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at AUT University (2015) followed by a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland (2018). She also holds a Mauri Ora Certificate in Māori culture from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Her studio methodology combines traditional painting techniques with a material sensitivity to place, using layers of oil and rabbit-skin gesso on natural and reclaimed surfaces to convey landscape as lived experience.

Her work has been recognised through multiple award selections, including being a double selected finalist in the National Contemporary Art Awards (2022) and a finalist in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award (2021). Solo exhibitions include All-at-Once-ness at Corbans Art Estate Homestead Gallery (2023) and Gestures, the Land Speaks at Wallace Gallery Morrinsville (2023), alongside numerous group shows such as Sub-Urbia at Northart Gallery and The Table at Aotearoa Artfair. Her paintings are held in prestigious collections including The Arts Trust at Pah Homestead, Auckland.

Wood’s practice is rooted in an attentive engagement with environment, history and embodied process, shaping works that reflect both the material world and cultural narratives of whenua and wairua (spirit).


ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an award-winning artist from Aotearoa New Zealand, and my work is grounded in an intimate engagement with place and whakapapa, centred on Te Pūaha o Waikato where I live and work.

My current body of work engages with the volcanic black sand of Aotearoa’s West Coast as both material and metaphor — its movements, accumulations, and its constant reshaping of the shoreline over time. These paintings are an ode to the drama and monumentality of the shifting dune systems. They are concentrated images that hold the feeling of being subsumed within something greater than myself — something powerful and uncontrollable.

Through highly laboured processes — building layers of gesso and hand-made egg tempera mixed with natural pigments — I approach each painting as an event, part of a life cycle. I relinquish the desire to capture or still natural phenomena; instead, I work in collaboration with material and time.

Using a pared-down, minimalist abstract language of clean lines and simple forms, I create expansive, atmospheric works that gently surround the viewer. Surfaces built from natural and synthetic pigments, combined with locally sourced volcanic sands, form tactile fields of deep and luminous colour that invite slow looking and embodied experience.

Situated within the context of the Anthropocene, my practice is a meditation on place, connection, and time — reflecting on the intertwined geological and cultural histories that continue to shape our shifting world, and our enduring relationship to land, water, and memory.