After attending Maryland Institute College of Art for her undergraduate students and Queens College for her MFA, Irish established herself as a voice in the East Village art scene of the 1980s with a series of exhibitions at Sharpe Gallery featuring architectural and interior architectural paintings. Jane's work began to focus itself around the Vietnam War when she became interested in a 1970 anti-war march from Morristown, N.J., to Valley Forge. This led her to organize an exhibition called "Operation Rapid American Withdrawal, 1970/2005" with over 75 artists participating at the Crane Arts Ice Box Gallery in Philadelphia. In 2012, Jane participated in a multi-venue exhibition at La Salle University which was featured simultaneously at the La Salle University Art Museum and the Connelly Library. Irish had been using the Connelly Library’s world‐renowned rare book and manuscript collection, "Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War", for nearly a decade leading up to that exhibition. The collection contains 20,000 creative items related to the Vietnam War, and the exhibition featured a large mural painting, other works by Irish, alongside materials from the collection chosen in collaboration with John Baky, Director of Libraries and Curator of Special Collections.

Her work is in numerous public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bryn Mawr College, LaSalle University Museum, and the Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

Jane Irish has exhibited at venues including Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Institute of Contemporary Art, PA; the Walker Art Center, MN; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Irish has been the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, a Painting Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, and a Painting Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work is held in public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

In 2011 Irish received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In 2009, Irish received a prestigious Painters & Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. In 1982 she was honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Painting Fellowship.

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