Joan Funk Fine Arts: Exhibit to see- Janet Fish Master of Light & Shadow

Watercolor paintings by Janet Fish

When I think of watercolor paintings I think of Janet Fish's watercolors. Wonderful paintings full of translucent light and color. I think of them as happy paintings.

I was very pleased to see that the Huntsville Museum of Art was organizing an exhibit of her work- Janet Fish- Master of Light & Shadow. The exhibit runs through July 27, 2014.

The exhibit is not of her watercolors but instead it is her oil paintings. There are 43 paintings from 1969-2008 in the exhibit. The paintings are large.

Anderson’s Fairy Tales, 1999 oil on canvas, Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

The same love of light and color is apparent in her oil paintings. Janet Fish attributes her fascination with color and light to early years growing up in Bermuda.

Her paintings are filled with common subjects- still lifes with bottles, glasses, flowers; picnic tables with people playing in the background. In general the people in her paintings are not the focal point but provide layers, context, and action.

She has the ability to take ordinary household objects- like salad dressing in bottles or apples wrapped in cellophane and create an unique interesting painting of light and color.

I would be hard pressed to pick out a favorite painting in the show- however, the use of color and light to represent the delicate etching or pressed-design in Ivan's Glasses; her rendering of the cellophane, ribbon, and glass plates, in Ice Cream Sundae; and juxtaposition of punch, cake, ballons, and children in Ballons, would make those paintings my three favorites in the exhibit.

She comes from an artist family with a art history professor for a father and a mother who was a sculptor and potter. Her grandfather was American Impressionist painter Clark Voorhees- one of the founders of the Old Lyme Art Colony.