Jan-Marie Spanard graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Rochester Institute of Technology and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree, a Master of Business Administration, and a Ph.D. in Higher/Postsecondary Education at Syracuse University. She has held teaching and academic positions at public and privates colleges and universities in northeastern United States.

Jan-Marie's paintings and photographs reflect her reaction of the absolute beauty of the natural world. She lives on a lake in the midst of the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York state and notes, daily, the changes in the sky, the lake, the forests and mountains that surround her home.

• designed and created striking public art paintings, including "Hudson River Way Paintings," a series of 30 trompe l'oeil still life paintings executed in Keim potassium silicates which won the Americans for the Arts Public Art Award for outstanding public art works in 2003, 
• executed architectural painting restoration projects for the Assembly Chamber of the New York State Capitol Building, various buildings of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and others,
• created highly realistic murals and architectural trompe l'oeils for organizations and individuals throughout the northeast,
• and led numerous visual arts educational programs for public and private school students.

As an individual painter of both figurative trompe l'oeil and abstract trompe l'oeil works, she has won national and international awards and competitions and is pleased to have her works included in public and private collections in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy.