Jane Gilday
Jane Gilday is a painter, musician and writer, who has been based in the New Hope- Lambertville area for the last decade.

Working primarily in acrylics and watercolors, Gilday pursues three primary directions, although each can overlap, and sometimes merge: Landscapes, Decorative Pattern Pieces, and Illuminations.

The landscapes reflect a delight and reverence for the world-as-seen, especially in twilight or evening. Jane works both onsite and from memory, but most of the landscapes are actually syntheses of scenes seen and recombined into altogether imaginary, but archetypal, vistas. Many are concerned with the effect on form and color of subdued shadowless light. The work of Albert Pinkham Ryder was an early inspiration to Gilday, and remains so to this day.

The pattern pieces, although seeming abstract, are often very literal renderings of the all-over design seen in a riverbed, while standing in shallow water, looking straight down. Formed by the random energy of the current, stones, leaves and debris create a tapestry-like field of color and form, all related in tone by the wet and silt. These pieces are often referred to as river bottom paintings by the artist.

The illuminations combine text, usually poetry, with images and pattern. The Celtic tradition of illuminated manuscripts, the works of painter/ poet William Blake, and the nexus of music/poetry/art that Jane experienced in New York City in the 1970's inform the work. The words are often taken from poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, ancient texts such as the Psalms, and Gilday's own words. By calling them illuminations, Gilday makes reference to Rimbaud's prose poems of that title, illuminated manuscripts, and the artist's keen delight in the disparate pervasiveness of both light and language.

Often this illuminated aspect appears on the borders and frames of Jane's landscapes and the pattern pieces. Gilday's framing is done by the artist. The frames, integral to the finished pieces, are engraved and decorated with words and design motifs. The frames are often gold-leafed and glazed with washes of earth tones, an ancient tradition.