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Jane Goode Biography
Jane Goode is an artist who has understood herself as an Impressionist ever since she could define it.  Goode grew up in the Midwest among a family of academics who valued aesthetic appreciation.  The result was exposure and opportunity for a girl completely engaged by the process of painting.

"Growing up in the Chicago area," she said, "the Art Institute was the hub of creative enlightenment.  Visiting the museum at age 12, I found myself surrounded by the best assemblage of Impressionist painting outside of Paris.  I was drawn into their spell then and have never deviated from my path. I always wanted to be a painter."

Goode learned to paint by doing it.  She developed the context for it by majoring in art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill, from which she commenced with a Bachelor of Science degree.  This education was followed by a summer of landscape painting at the Chicago Art Institute, after which she embarked on four years of training at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.

Taught at the Art Center that New York was the ultimate destination for fortune, if not fame through commercial art, Goode and a small cadre of colleagues hit the Manhattan art scene.  There, she spent a year or two filling a portfolio with decorative illustrations before returning to Los Angeles and her fine art career.

While Goode’s husband, the late James Pilatos, went to work for Walt Disney Studios, she focused on fine art until their child, Clare, was born.  Once she was ready to get back into her work, Goode spent a summer in Idaho, studying under Russian Master Painter Sergei Bongart.

Upon Clare’s graduation from college, she and her mother went to France to travel the trail of the Impressionists, including a memorable visit to Monet’s Gardens at Giverny.  "In my life," said Goode, "one of the most important experiences was standing before a Monet painting and feeling the sensibilities of the artist who painted it, making the same discoveries as if I were going to place the next stroke. It was a major turning point in my life and my art, going to France."

Goode has long been a juried member of the Carmel Art Association and the Society of American Impressionists.  She has participated in numerous solo and invitational exhibitions. Represented by various art galleries throughout California and including New Mexico and Arizona over the years.