Jane Hughes (b.1984, Co. Meath, Ireland) lives and works between Ireland and Finland. Previously, she spent over a decade in Berlin. Her practice is centred on painting occasionally extending to drawing, sculpture, and installation.
Her work evolves in a process-based manner, while there are re-occurring themes and a framework she works within – the act of painting generates itself and the directions through doing, responding, and adapting.
Hughes works on several paintings at once. Sometimes, a painting works itself out rather quickly, but often, the process is slow—it can take many years for a painting to arrive. The painted surface is thick with its own histories—multiple layers, erasures and scratches, makeovers, and traces of previous selves. Symbols, figures, and landscapes dissolve and re-emerge in semi-abstractions and carefully considered colour fields. Giving space to interiority, ambiguity and the un-concrete.
Since 2005, she has exhibited internationally, first participating in a group exhibition as an art student at Villa de Bank in Enschede, The Netherlands. Her most recent solo exhibition, Everything soft slowly turns to bone, was held at the museum and exhibition centre, The North Atlantic Lighthouse, Hanstholm, Denmark (2025).
Selected solo exhibitions include; We Gulp Dark Moons, Galleria Napa, Rovaniemi, Finland (2024); These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins at TM•Gallery, Helsinki, Finland (2023); Architecture of Emotions at Custom House Studios & Gallery, Westport, Ireland (2018); Gods & Demons of the Forest at the Embassy of Ireland, Berlin, Germany (2015); and Detroit Stockholm, Sweden (2014).
Selected group exhibitions include; Odyssey, Turku Kunsthalle, Finland (2025); Beyond the Curtain at VISUAL Contemporary Art Centre, Carlow, Ireland (2024); BOOKED, MUU Contemporary Art Centre, Helsinki, Finland (2024); Surveyor Exhibition, Solstice Arts Centre, Ireland (2017); neither here nor there, Galway Arts Centre, Ireland (2014); and Grimmuseum, Berlin (2013).
She has been awarded several artist residencies, including the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan, Ireland (Meath County Council, Ireland, 2022) and a five-month residency at Stundars Museum (Arts Council of Ostrobothnia, Finland, 2015), among others.
Hughes earned an MA in Environmental Art from Aalto University, Helsinki (2012), including a year at the MA program in Art in Context at University of the Arts (UDK), Berlin (2010–2011). She previously completed a BA in Fine Art Painting at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin (2006).
Her work is held in public collections, including the Irish State Collection (Department of Foreign Affairs), the Finnish National Gallery, the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), and the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL).
Image credit: Azar Saiyar