Artist Profile

Janey Fritsche Profile Photo

Janey Fritsche

San Rafael, CA

STATEMENT for MarinMOCA solo show Feb 27 - Apr 18, 2021

My work for the last five or six years has focused on the ocean with a view for encouraging ocean conservation. Those series started as a result of living in Hawaii for six months where I experienced the joy of spending a lot of time in that beautiful water and the sorrow of seeing the damage to the coral reefs, and other sea life. In the early summer of this year, my paintings took an unplanned, emotional turn to doing figurative work in a “Call My Name” series, in response to the news of the horrible murders of innocent members of the Black community.

It has been a time of reckoning, and a time for regrouping. It fueled my personal need to seek refuge from the traumas we are all suffering with the pandemic, the wild fires, the social injustice, and the nightmare of our national government. Where do we turn for peace?

I go back to the seashore as I have most of my life as a place where I can find solace and experience blessed nature. That coupled with my ongoing meditation practice and recent portrait paintings led me to integrate figurative work into a new series related to life on the water, in this case China Camp State Park. With this new work, I’m focusing on the joy inherit when people let their day-to-day cares slip aside as they gather at the seashore. I believe that there is something magical about where the land meets the sea, the melding of conscious and subconscious. It is a place where we can do a “reset” for a fresh view of life, a place we can just be at peace, a place to awaken joy.

Perhaps art is about presenting different mental maps that can help shape the subconscious, and hence, our future. Life becomes what we think. My hope is that these paintings invite viewers to be more present in the moment and in nature, and encourage a better vision for moving forward and honoring all life on the planet.

BIO

Janey was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, where she spent considerable time with her mom’s extended family on the beaches of the Gulf coast - a source of inspiration to this day.

Upon graduation from high school, Janey was offered an art scholarship. Given her fear of being a starving artist, she turned to earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics with minors in Art and Sociology from Lamar University. She combined these seemingly disparate subjects into a career of interactive design work for clients like Apple, George Lucas Educational Foundation, Stanford University, Paramount Pictures, the Smithsonian, and the Grateful Dead. At the same time, Janey’s art education continued at San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, and College of Marin.

Her painting practice is woven together with her long-standing meditation practice and her abiding love of the ocean. Her memories carry a utopian vision that she explores in her search for “how can I use art as a force for good”? While living on Oahu for six months a few years back, Janey realized first hand the devastation to the coral reefs and other sea life. This inspired her to focus her artwork on the natural world related to the seas.

Janey’s paintings are collected nationally and internationally. In recent years, she completed an Artist in Residency at Kriti Gallery in Varanasi, India, and had a solo exhibition of her work at the Maturango Museum in southern California and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. Her commission work includes paintings for Kaiser Permanente Technology Center, Kaiser Permanente Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, Sutter Cathedral Hills Hospital, and Bodega Bay Lodge.

Janey has lived in the San Francisco bay area since 1981; her studio is in San Rafael, California.

My Artwork

It's All a Dream We Dreamed

Janey Fritsche

Turn Off Your Mind, Relax, and Float Downstream II

Janey Fritsche

Rhythm and Flow I

Janey Fritsche

Floating Above the Azure Sea

Janey Fritsche

Turn Off Your Mind, Relax, and Float Downstream I

Janey Fritsche

Let's Play

Janey Fritsche

Rhythm and Flow III

Janey Fritsche

The Song of Rocks and Tides II

Janey Fritsche

Cool Breeze Samba

Janey Fritsche

Nightfall of Diamonds

Janey Fritsche

Azure Slipstream

Janey Fritsche

Flight of the Seabirds

Janey Fritsche