Bio
Janet has been influenced since her early childhood days by the forms and colors of the pastoral farm-scapes and rich lake-scapes of her home state of Michigan. Though, the impact of her mother’s illness and eventual death with Cancer would prove to be her most enormous emotional influence. She studied art history and participated in summer fine art classes at The Cranbrook Institute of Arts as a child. She did volunteer work as a docent at the Detroit Institute of Art while a young student. She was assistant to the 19th Century American Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art while attending college in Los Angeles. Janet did undergrad work in American Art History at the University of Southern California. She is considered an expert and performs as an appraiser of 19th and 20th Century American painting and sculpture.
After a long and prosperous career art consulting in California, Janet was faced with cancer. Three surgeries, and two treatments later, she decided to follow her early dreams of becoming an abstract painter. Primarily self-taught, what Janet lacked in formal training, she made up in hard work and perseverance. Several years, four daughters, and many paintings later, Janet’s work can be seen in many important contemporary collections. Her clients include writers, designers, composers, painters, artists, actors, and sports figures. You can see her work in hotel lobbies, on television show and movie sets, corporate hallways, and wonderful, unique residential homes.
Janet is influenced by the American Abstract painters of the 1950’s. Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. The colors of the sea and shore; the pastures where her horses graze and the sunlight playing against the foothills of her home all help provide her work drama and intensity. In her paintings, she works in broad, brilliant strokes, using techniques and tools that contain a very signature style.
Janet’s home studio is rich in charm and curiosity. Her Paint horses hang their heads inside her studio in amusement while she orchestrates her next body of work, or plans her next solo charity exhibition. It is located high in the foothills of Steinbeck’s “Pastures of Heaven” in the fertile Salinas Valley of Central California. Visitors are always welcomed by happy dogs, beautiful paintings, new, and fresh music, and her enigmatic style. Commissioned work is gladly accepted. Don’t be surprised if Janet manages to act as artist, designer, sister, therapist....clients go away feeling as though they have been understood for the first time. This painter, woman, mother, philanthropist, friend cannot be pidgeon-holed.
