Janet Fish is known for her large, bold, still life paintings and drawings that study how light bounces through and off various surfaces. Among her favorite subjects are produce incased in plastic wrap, clear glassware and liquids.Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces. Her work has been characterized as photorealist, although she does not consider herself a “photorealist,” possibly objecting to the way “photorealism” infers that the source view is the camera, and not the eye of the artist.Elements such as composition and use of color demonstrate her point of view as a painter rather than a photographer.
[divider line_type=”Full Width Line” custom_height=”20 Below: An excerpt from Peter Malone, posted on HyperAllergenic 1/28/16. You can read the full article here.
Janet Fish’s Jarring Experiments in Still Life Painting
Among several modes enthusiastically adopted by painters in the last century, spontaneity is still held in the highest regard. Having proved durable for artists of varying ideologies and orientations, spontaneity has been transformed from a method to a value. Overworking an image, a technical misstep one assumes was as common in the past as it is today, is no longer understood as a misstep but as an insufficient appreciation of the extemporaneous. Our ubiquitous taste for color in the higher keys is also a direct result of our collective loyalty to this and to other assertive painting methods. Color is likely to be cleaner and more intense if applied in uninterrupted passes over a prepared surface.
These generally accepted values — intense color and spontaneous execution — defined the ground on which representational painters made peace with their abstract brethren in the early 1960s. What ties the work of Lois Dodd and Neil Welliver to the period that saw the rise of Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella is a shared bias toward directly applied and unadulterated color, and it is on this same ground that Janet Fish has thrived for decades, exploring in subtle ways the boundaries of representational and abstract painting.
People posted hundreds of drawings for our 30 day January challenge, in which artists are invited to respond to a daily prompt posted on our V. Notes blog. Unlike other drawing challenges, these prompts are wildly varied, open to non-typical materials around us, and are designed to feed a broad spectrum of creative skills at …
Preparing for my Unconventional Portraits class this Friday night, I asked Google to show me famous portrait painters. I saw this: In a line of 27 portrait painters, 24 are white men. The exceptions are two black people, and two women. One person in the line is both black, and a woman: Amy Sherald. That …
League instructor Jon Patrick is teaching a class on artist’s books. One of the works mentioned in his class today was this collaboration between Asger Jorn and Guy Debord. Jorn and Debord were part of Situationist International, and CoBrA. [divider line_type=”Full Width Line From Wikipedia: Mémoires (Memories) is an artist’s book made by the Danish artist …
[image_with_animation image_url=”10046″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Gary Bennett I’ve been a recycling pro since I was a little kid, but over the years I’ve gotten confused about what’s recyclable and what isn’t. Standing in front of the bins, I hesitate with doubt. Used coffee cups? Metal bottle-caps? Gently used paper towels? I guess I’m not …
Janet Fish is not a photorealist, she’s a painter
JANET FISH
Born 1938
Janet Fish is known for her large, bold, still life paintings and drawings that study how light bounces through and off various surfaces. Among her favorite subjects are produce incased in plastic wrap, clear glassware and liquids. Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces. Her work has been characterized as photorealist, although she does not consider herself a “photorealist,” possibly objecting to the way “photorealism” infers that the source view is the camera, and not the eye of the artist. Elements such as composition and use of color demonstrate her point of view as a painter rather than a photographer.
Janet Fish’s Jarring Experiments in Still Life Painting
[image_with_animation image_url=”3668″ alignment=”” animation=”None
Among several modes enthusiastically adopted by painters in the last century, spontaneity is still held in the highest regard. Having proved durable for artists of varying ideologies and orientations, spontaneity has been transformed from a method to a value. Overworking an image, a technical misstep one assumes was as common in the past as it is today, is no longer understood as a misstep but as an insufficient appreciation of the extemporaneous. Our ubiquitous taste for color in the higher keys is also a direct result of our collective loyalty to this and to other assertive painting methods. Color is likely to be cleaner and more intense if applied in uninterrupted passes over a prepared surface.
These generally accepted values — intense color and spontaneous execution — defined the ground on which representational painters made peace with their abstract brethren in the early 1960s. What ties the work of Lois Dodd and Neil Welliver to the period that saw the rise of Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella is a shared bias toward directly applied and unadulterated color, and it is on this same ground that Janet Fish has thrived for decades, exploring in subtle ways the boundaries of representational and abstract painting.
Related Posts
30SAL Faves: Week 3, Part 1
People posted hundreds of drawings for our 30 day January challenge, in which artists are invited to respond to a daily prompt posted on our V. Notes blog. Unlike other drawing challenges, these prompts are wildly varied, open to non-typical materials around us, and are designed to feed a broad spectrum of creative skills at …
Amy Sherald
Preparing for my Unconventional Portraits class this Friday night, I asked Google to show me famous portrait painters. I saw this: In a line of 27 portrait painters, 24 are white men. The exceptions are two black people, and two women. One person in the line is both black, and a woman: Amy Sherald. That …
Asger Jorn and Guy Debord
League instructor Jon Patrick is teaching a class on artist’s books. One of the works mentioned in his class today was this collaboration between Asger Jorn and Guy Debord. Jorn and Debord were part of Situationist International, and CoBrA. [divider line_type=”Full Width Line From Wikipedia: Mémoires (Memories) is an artist’s book made by the Danish artist …
SAL Challenge: Recycling
[image_with_animation image_url=”10046″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Gary Bennett I’ve been a recycling pro since I was a little kid, but over the years I’ve gotten confused about what’s recyclable and what isn’t. Standing in front of the bins, I hesitate with doubt. Used coffee cups? Metal bottle-caps? Gently used paper towels? I guess I’m not …