Jo Werts studied art at the Chicago Art Institute and the University of Chicago and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California. But she did not start out to be a painter. Her first love was modern dance and music, combining the stimulation of the music and rhythm with her fascination with color and pattern.
This museum presented a one-woman exhibition of her work in February—March 2000 entitled Jo Werts: Watercolor Spring. The exhibition was guest curated by her friend and fellow-artist Sally Tippman. At the time Sally Tippman wrote, “Jo Werts is a very productive painter, she abstracts the essence of fields of flowers and the human form, working from her inner self, getting beneath the surface, searching out the essence of the subject.”
Before moving to Southern California to be near her daughter, Jo Werts lived for approximately fifty years in a house she designed in Cambria, California.
Donated to the Permanent Collection from the estate of Priscilla & Myron Graham in 2013.