Jane Dickson was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 18, 1952. She studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1976 and at Harvard where she received a Bachelor of Art degree in 1976. She came to New York in 1978. Having studied computer animation in college, she qualified soon after her arrival for a job working on the Spectacolor computer billboard above Times Square. When she left the job, she was hooked on the effects of light on a black board and hooked on her surroundings.

Dickson brings an unpredictable quality to a familiar scene; she paints people doing ordinary things on the streets below where she lives in Times Square. Mothers pushing baby carriages, peep shows, cheek by jowl with hat stores and large carnival...