ABOUT

Andrew Jansons

Andrew Jansons was an American painter born in Riga, Latvia on May 23, 1942. Forced to flee the Soviet Occupation, Jansons lived in a refugee camp in Allied Germany before immigrating to Brooklyn, New York where he spent his childhood. He studied physics and engineering at Lehigh University and received his M.F.A. in painting from Columbia University where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

Jansons lived and had his studio on Wooster Street in SoHo, New York during the art boom of the 1970s and 1980s. His work was influenced by his personal history and by the natural world, with time spent painting on Shelter Island, in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, and later at the small farm he and his family have in the Catskill mountain town of Cochecton, NY. A master colorist, paintings like Cochecton Divers are emblematic of the vibrant post-Abstract Expressionism that is characteristic of Jansons' powerful later work.

Andrew died in New York City in November, 1989. He was married to his wife, Karen, until his death and has two children and two grandchildren.