Artist Profile

Janet Bogardus

Novato, CA

J A N E T B O G A R D U S
Artist?s Statement


I?m a painter interested in showing human nature interacting with nature - a paradox. We live within nature and depend on it, yet through our ?nature? as investigators, inventors, builders, and molders of our environment, we have degraded much of what we and other species need to survive. Our constructs emit blight and waste even while they radiate beauty, creativity, opportunity, and entertainment.

I use many thin, brushed, penned, or scraped layers of acrylic paint, paint scrapings, charcoal and paper scraps on canvas, panel, or digital prints to portray cities, towers, piers and highways floating in landscapes with uncertain horizon lines.

I have been a San Francisco Bay Area painter and mixed media artist for thirty years. Since I received an MFA from San Francisco State University in 1990, I have exhibited in the Bay Area, Southern California, New York, and in venues on the Pacific Rim.

Much of my current work explores humans' relationship to the environment. I probably came to this interest because my father's career entailed traveling every few years to a different country. Understanding the lay of the land, the streets and the buildings; creating a map of the new place in my head; and keeping alive memories of its sensual reality became vital to me. This early concern with how I fit in my environment has broadened over the years, as warnings of global climate change and species extinction have accumulated.