Born and raised in Ontario, Janet moved to British Columbia to attend university where she earned a Bachelor of Education. She has been an art educator in many settings and has been consistently creating paintings since 2001. Currently Janet's works explore colour and depth of field, moving from crisp lines to blurred edges, from realism to abstraction.Janet has participated in solo and group exhibitions, in the lower mainland and in Saskatoon, Vancouver and Victoria. Her works are held in local, national and international private collections.
I have a broad yet simple desire in my paintings: to create something
beautiful.
It's not that I want to ignore the ugliness of life, far from
it, but I want my pieces to encourage environments of relief, release, and
tenderness. My intention is for my pieces to aid in transforming a house
into a home, a board room into a table of open discussion, a facility into a
space for community.
Why flowers? I have asked myself the question many times
over the past number of years. Maybe it's because I find them infinitely
beautiful: startling in their colour and tenacity and
extravagance. A green shoot pushing up through the ground in
spring, a seed head holding on by the roadside, or a brazen splash of pink
peeking out around the green: these are gifts offered to a deep
part within me. A part that sometimes I don't even notice is needy until
the gift is received.
"Seen and Unseen" is a great description of my
aesthetic, as I often paint the interplay between realism and
semi-abstraction. It also speaks to my subject choice as I strive to
highlight beauty that is missed, such as a wildflower growing on the side of a
fence, or last years vines behind a clematis. In this time when the
future feels largely 'unseen' it is such a gift to look and see all the beauty
that surrounds us.
