Jana Wood is an Aotearoa-based artist whose practice is shaped by the elemental forces of Port Waikato. Working through meditative, labour-intensive processes, she creates abstract paintings that respond to erosion, shifting light, and the slow rhythms of land meeting sea, capturing moments of transformation, renewal, and breath within the landscape.

Having left Tāmaki Makaurau for this edge of shifting light and constant motion, Jana is immersed in a landscape shaped by both ancestral presence and colonial histories. Port Waikato offers a visual storm of layered perception, and it is here that her practice turns toward the elemental.

Responding to the slow erosion of land and beach into the restless ocean, Jana’s current body of work explores abstraction through metaphysical undercurrents. Her paintings are formed through deeply meditative, labour-intensive processes: veils of gesso and egg tempera, slow and sensuous passages of oil paint, and layers of natural pigments and volcanic sand gathered from her surroundings. Each work is treated as an event – an encounter with place – capturing small fragments of a living cycle as the landscape transforms, erodes, renews, and breathes.

Jana Wood holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from AUT and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts from Elam, University of Auckland. She has exhibited widely across Aotearoa and has been a selected finalist in numerous notable awards, including the Waiheke Art Awards (where she received the Zinnie Douglas Award), the New Zealand Contemporary Art Award, the Molly Morpeth, and the Estuary Art Awards. Her work is held in the Arthouse Trust collection.