Jane Fielder: Painting The Spirit Of Bingley

A new exhibition at The Bingley Gallery celebrates the work of one of the town’s best-known artists, Jane Fielder. For Jane, painting is about much more than putting brush to canvas. It is a way of capturing the character of the places around her and sharing her enthusiasm for art and life. As a full-time professional artist, Jane finds endless inspiration in her surroundings. “I often feel I’m one of the luckiest people,” she says. “I love the mix of industrial architecture and natural beauty, and I like nothing better than capturing the essence of what I see and conveying my love of the area through my paintings.”

Although Bingley and West Yorkshire have been home to Jane and her family for many years, her artistic journey began much further south. Born in Kent, at the age of 5 she moved to the rural Cotswolds where, roaming among the limestone hills, she developed an early love of nature, particularly flowers. Her enthusiasm for painting and making things emerged at this time. “As a child, my favourite presents were paint, paper and Sellotape,” she recalls. “I spent hours painting and creating things out of coloured paper and tape.” That enthusiasm has remained with her ever since.

After moving with her parents to Limerick, she completed her schooling and attended teacher training college in Dublin. After this Jane returned to England and spent five years working as a teacher. But teaching left little time for her own painting. An art foundation course at West Surrey College of Art put her back on the path towards becoming an artist. Marriage and family followed, with Jane moving to West Yorkshire. Here, she found a landscape whose “strange beauty” appealed to her and began developing a balance between family life and her growing commitment to art.

At Bradford and Ilkley Community College, Jane was steered towards textile design rather than fine art. However, the contacts she made there proved invaluable, giving her the confidence to believe that she could eventually make a career as a professional painter. Further encouragement came from fellow artists, including members of Aire Valley Arts, who helped Jane develop her own distinctive style and encouraged her to exhibit regularly. Since then, there have been numerous exhibitions, along with commendations, prizes and commissions. Among the more unusual highlights of her career was taking part in Antony Gormley’s 4^th Plinth project. For each hour over one hundred days a series of different people were lifted up to occupy the empty plinth of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square – in her case to paint on behalf of the Bradford Burns Unit. She has also undertaken a residency and exhibition in Shanghai and appeared on the television programme The Yorkshire Auction House.

Her most loyal supporters, however, remain much closer to home. Jane’s distinctive “Janescapes” have become a familiar feature in homes around Bingley and beyond. Painted in bold colours, the works capture the town in all its quirky character, often featuring her trademark washing line, strung between the buildings. However, Jane’s artistic repertoire extends far beyond the local landscape. Her floral paintings use delicate watercolour washes and acrylic ink to explore the fragility and intensity of flowers. Mixed-media works incorporate unexpected found objects, from plastic wrapping to dead flies. She is also an enthusiastic life drawer and has organised life-drawing classes for herself and others over many years. The short poses required in life drawing encourage a particularly energetic and loose style of painting.

Jane’s work often reflects her naturally light-hearted personality, but her art has also provided a way of dealing with more difficult periods in her life. When her mother suffered a severe stroke in 2009, Jane found herself overwhelmed by a mixture of difficult emotions. Her artistic response was very different from her usual work. She began filling paper and canvas with dots, often arranged in highly structured, regular patterns. The repetitive process of creating them proved absorbing and calming. Out of a period of ugliness and disorder came something beautiful. As the pain subsided, the dot paintings gradually disappeared into the past — until recently, when a television crew needed footage of her painting. “The dots came back,” she says.

Jane has also left her mark on the local arts scene through The Bingley Gallery, which she founded and ran with her husband, Rob, for 12 years. Other commitments, including spending time with her grandchildren, eventually led to the gallery being handed over to fellow artist David Starley, although Jane continues to maintain a permanent collection of her work there, largely consisting of her much-loved Janescapes. For four weeks, however, the gallery’s main exhibition space will be devoted to a much broader selection of Jane’s work. The show: ‘Jane Fielder – Other Sides’, offers visitors the chance to see the many different facets of an artist whose inspiration has ranged from the streets of Bingley to the flowers of the Cotswolds — and from moments of joy to periods of profound personal difficulty.

For Jane Fielder, painting has always been about seeing the world, finding beauty in it and sharing that vision with others.

The exhibition runs from 15th October until 8th November 2026 at the Bingley Gallery, 29b Park Road BD164BQ with a preview, open to all, between 7 and 9pm on Weds 14th. Further information can be found on the Bingley Gallery Website.