Jane Allensworth received her Bachelor of Science from The University of Missouri. She studied at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts School (now Glassell School), Houston, Texas, and the Art Students League in New York, New York. Allensworth exhibited her art beginning in 1970; she had several one-person exhibitions in Galveston and Houston.
Jane worked in light washes of acrylic to create luminous veils of color. On top of this ground, she often employed masking techniques or graphite to create sharp surface markings that expanded the skin of color field painting beyond the atmospheric to allude to multidimensional planes. In reducing content to the basic line, she emphasized the metaphysical effects of color. Her works were often singled out in art reviews and juried competitions: esteemed critic and artist Peter Plagens selected her Chinese Vase Paintings as a winner in "The Amarillo Competition" of 1977. The year before, The Post's arts writer Mimi Crossley noted her work was akin to Mark Rothko's canvases in their ability to "produce a mood, a meditation, a state of reflection." Jane was never interested in the fumbling of context or biography, asserting, "it's the painting that counts, not who did it."
Institutions that collected her work during her lifetime include A.T.&T., New York, New York; Alfanco, Inc., Houston, Texas; Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Co., Shreveport, Louisiana; Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont, Texas; Colonial American National Bank, Roanoke, Virginia; Dean Witter Reynolds, San Antonio, Texas; First City National Bank, Houston, Texas; First Hutchings-Sealy National Bank, Galveston, Texas; Galveston Houston Company, Houston, Texas; Gary Gross, Inc., Houston, Texas; Hospital Corporation of America, Nashville, Tennessee; Insco Insurance Company, Houston, Texas; Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Houston, Texas; Lackshin/Nathan Houston, Texas; Minzenmeyer & McGee Architects, Houston, Texas; Philip Morris, New York, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Ruska Instruments, Houston, Texas; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas; Southland Corporation, Dallas, Texas; Texas America Bank-Galleria, Houston, Texas; Texas General Petroleum, Houston, Texas; United States National Bank, Galveston, Texas; The University of Houston, Clear Lake, Texas; Weingarten Realty, Houston, Texas; William Temple Foundation, Galveston, Texas; Wilson Industries, Houston, Texas. Jane Allensworth’s records are listed in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
