Independent Arts News Reporting 
Pictured Above: The studio of artist Janine Dunn Wade, the honored artist for the 95th Juried Art Show at Phillips’ Mill. Photo Credit: Contributed.
Full Circle with Artist Janine Dunn Wade, Honored Artist at Phillips’ Mill
By Louise Feder
Arts News Now writer Louise Feder visits the studio for an in-depth interview with Phillips’ Mill’s honored artist, Janine Dunn Wade. Feder explores Wade’s artistic path, process, and the full-circle moment connecting her to this distinctive and beloved art show, now celebrating its 95th year.
“I like it when a painting shows the history of it being made, you know?”
Janine Dunn Wade stands in her sunny living room, gesturing at a large, vibrant still life. The wall is covered in colorful still lives of all sizes, but it’s clear this one is special. In it, lilies of varying sizes sit in vases on a table in front of a window, surrounded by light, airy curtains and a delicate, floral wallpaper. She leans in, pointing to an area where layers of gesso, built up and then scraped away, have left subtle lines, like veins in the canvas.
“Like in theater or literature, it [the artwork] unfolds over time. In painting the entire piece is presented at once,” she explains to me. And so, standing next to her on this bright, September morning, I am able to view and engage with Wade’s whole process – a flower petal is haloed by a swooping line left from early sketching, watercolor-like drips wander through areas where the surface is thinner, and one can easily imagine the artist’s hand building up the paint in other, thicker parts of the finished piece. None of these glimpses at earlier chapters in the painting’s creation feel accidental – instead they act as an invitation to peek inside the artist’s process and offer a glimpse at her path to the final painting before us.
For some 35 years, Wade has lived and painted in Bucks County – first in Holland and then, for the past 25 years, in her Doylestown home and studio. Every year for the past 30 years, she has submitted a piece to the Annual Juried Art Show at Phillips’ Mill, which Wade says she always does, “as a promise to myself.” And now, for the exhibition’s 95th year, Wade is the Mill’s Honored Artist.
Pictured Above: An assortment of Janine Dunn Wade’s work on her studio wall. Photo Credit: Contributed.
“It feels like, at my age, the circle is kind of closing,” she tells me when I ask what it feels like to receive the honor after such a long history with the Mill and this show in particular. “Now I feel as though I’ve sort of become enmeshed with the history of the Mill. This is a completion on a circle in my life in so many ways.”
After graduating from Villanova and taking art classes at neighboring Rosemont College, Wade and her husband moved to New York City where, after leaving a job in the financial sector as a young mother, Wade returned to a life-long love of drawing, and painting and pastels.
“There was a summer where he [my eldest son] was born in April and I couldn’t go back to work in three weeks, so Central Park was my home that summer,” Wade recalls. “I would bring bottles, and paints, and drawing materials, and I just sat by the boat basin all summer. It was great.”
Pictured Above: Artist Janine Dunn Wade. Photo Credit: Contributed.
She stuck with pastels over the ensuing years where life involved young children and a rapid pace of activity. “You can’t tell a young child, ‘Hold on let me just clean my brushes,’ so I did oil pastels here, in our sunroom,” she says with a good-natured laugh. “You have to let the practicalities in too.”
Together, we look at examples of Wade’s earlier work in oil pastels. They are lush, rich with color and often playing with ideas of space. In one particular still life, flowers in a vase sit on top of what at first glance appears to be a table and in front of a red, patterned wall paper. But it is only after standing together, talking about materials and process that I realize the flowers are on top of a chair and the wall paper is a tablecloth draped over the chair’s back, making for a dramatic backdrop of posed, real flowers against patterned, floral pattern. It’s subtle, controlled, and clever.
About 14 years ago, when her children were older, Wade turned away from oil pastels and back toward oil paint. “You know, I just wanted to get back into that squishing thing. I was ready.” She stayed mainly with still lives though.
Pictured Above: The workspace and sketches of artist Janine Dunn Wade. Photo Credit: Contributed.
“I love to paint with other people, but if someone wants the vase to the right, and I want it to the left it’s a real hurdle for me to get over. So, I love the control: I can move things where I want, or change the color, or add what I feel the piece needs.” Back in the kitchen, she shows me a print of her painting Mad Hatter Tabletop. In it, a table full of plates, flowers, and fruit is set at a jaunty angle, and Wade knew it needed something at the bottom, just left of center. So, she added an impossibly placed plate, one that she knew would fall off the table in real life, but was exactly what the painting needed, per Wade. A perfectionist, she has also been known to take a painting down from the wall to make a change, years after it was first considered finished.
“One of the things I’ve always said is that [painting] is like a conversation,” Wade tells me as we walk together, downstairs and into her studio. “You need to acquiesce to the demands of paint and the subject. It’s like a three-way dialogue: there’s the subject, there’s the paint, and then there’s the painter. And it’s so hard to get into it, but once you get there, I mean it could be three or four in the morning when I finally put it down. But then, when it’s finally working and finally happening you don’t even look at the clock; you have to be open.”
Paintings are everywhere in Wade’s home and studio. The artist’s commanding color palette is a constant throughline through the dozens of canvases around us and a sense of delight and anticipation permeates each room as I let my eye wander, seeking out just one more still life, perhaps tucked under a cabinet, or discover an early pastel hung just around the corner. As we wander and talk, Wade pauses often to point out personal details in many of her paintings – the lilies in the earlier mentioned painting are placed in honor of newly born granddaughter, Lily; a ball of yarn was a gift from a dear friend; a particular vase was a gift from one of her sons. The paintings’ subjects may be objects on a table, or flowers in a vase, but each one has a deep emotional resonance for Wade as well as a connection to her own personal history. “It’s funny how paintings tell a story,” she says with a smile. “Life and art just go together.”
Pictured Above: The workspace and sketches of artist Janine Dunn Wade. Photo Credit: Contributed.
The same is true of her relationship to Phillips’ Mill. That first year, 30 years ago when Wade submitted and was accepted into the show, her entire family had chicken pox. And so, the night of the opening, Wade drove by herself in the rain, parking behind loads of cars (all parked along the narrow, winding section of River Road back in those days), and arrived at the front door soaking wet. But she walked in, found her piece (“It was downstairs to the left. I could show you.”), and remembers the night, the artwork, and the show fondly. Now, when asked what she is looking forward to most about this year’s show and her Honored Artist year, Wade’s answer is simple: “You know, I really just want to say thank you.”
The 95th Annual Juried Art Show at Phillips’ Mill opens on September 21st and runs through October 27, 2024 at the Phillips’ Mill Community Association, located at 2619 River Road, New Hope, PA 18938. More information about the historic exhibition can be found on their website here, and more information about Janine Dunn Wade can be found on her website here.
