About

Jane Maxwell is a mixed-media artist from Boston, Massachusetts. Her artwork is a collage of found materials and objects, primarily upcycled paper.

She has spent her 25-year career commenting on the societal pressure women feel to strive for perfection. She explores the conflict of both resisting media messaging, yet caving to fashion, diet and anti-aging trends. She is interested in the duality of how women present to the outside world vs. their messier internal lives.

She tackles this tension with works that are heavily layered with found paper and objects, featuring idealized, trim silhouettes that have been stripped of perfection through deconstructed faces, clothing and backgrounds. 

Maxwell’s work is largely material driven; series’ are inspired by random run-ins with compelling and found papers. For example, in Prague she saw two trashmen pulling layers of billboard ads off the side of a building. She was drawn to their distressed textures and colors. The men couldn’t speak English, so through hand gestures she allayed their confusion while filling bags to take home. Billboard papers have been the mainstay of her work for the past 10 years.

Her most recent series ‘In Your Face,’ presented at Lanoue Gallery in Boston, will premier in October 2025 and is her 25th solo show. In this new collection, Maxwell continues her focus on acceptance vs. perfection by exploring the pressure women feel to look younger. As always, materiality is central to each piece. Discarded vials, boxes and instruction pamphlets from anti-aging products have been stitched, sanded, glued and stapled onto panel.

Beyond her art, Maxwell is the founder of Mood.org, a nonprofit that provides tweens and teens with proven, mental health tools to help them regulate their emotions in real time.

Maxwell graduated with a BA in Literature from Middlebury College. She studied mixed media at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Decordova Museum School in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Maxwell’s work has been featured in several books on mixed media and collage and she was included in the 30th anniversary edition of “Who’s Who in American Art.” She was commissioned to create a five-piece series to celebrate Princess Grace’s 90th birthday in Monaco. Her work is exhibited at major galleries throughout the United States and acquired by collectors from around the world.