Janet Fish
(American, b. 1938)

"Peacock Feathers", 2003

oil on canvas
signed and dated lower left, titled and with a "LewAllen Contemporary/Santa Fe, New Mexico" label en verso. Framed. Together with the original receipt and exhibition brochure from LewAllen Contemporary.
24" x 18"

Provenance: LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Collection of Zelda Gartner, Jacksonville, Florida.

Notes: A member of an artistic Boston family - her sister is a photographer, her mother is a sculptor, and her maternal grandfather was the Impressionist painter Clark Voorhees (1871-1933) - Janet Fish grew up on the sun-drenched island of Bermuda. She graduated from Smith College and was one of the first women to be accepted into the MA program at Yale University, being awarded her degree in 1963. While at Yale, she attended the color theory class conducted by Josef Albers (1888-1976), which was to prove influential in her eventual approach to color and tone. Though she received her training at a time when abstract expressionism was the most lauded and encouraged artistic style, Fish was soon to abandon this approach in favor of something more representational.

Fish's lush, luminous still lifes, often of ordinary objects, reveal a masterful understanding of the interplay of color and the movement of light. Employing a palette of rich, saturated colors, and virtually no chiaroscuro, and a painterly approach which distills her subjects into an abstracted form (without losing their essence), she creates works imbued with a sense of energy and vibrancy.

Fish received the MacDowell Fellowship in 1968 and 1972, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1994. Her works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among numerous others. References: Arnold, Susanne and Morgan, Robert C. Janet Fish: Paintings and Drawings Since 1975 Exhibition Catalogue, September 10-October 3, 1987, Marsh Gallery, University of Richmond, Virginia.