“The content of my paintings lies beyond the visible features of woods and rocks and water. My intention is to convey the sense of a place; the moving air, the solidity of rock and the transience of water and the strength of the ground beneath. I feel a great affection for the otherness of the natural world, for a place which I have just entered which existed autonomously before I saw and felt it, and which continues to exist when I leave. What I depend on is the separateness of wilderness.
For me the magic of the landscape is that it is actually a parallel world to that of humankind. I am delighted when I find a place that is perfect in its wholeness, clearly a world apart, that requires nothing of me, and that offers me nothing but a vision of its self-sufficiency. I don’t want to be merely in a place that exists outside and beyond me, I want to become that place.
The act of painting unites me with a wilderness that I recognize within myself. When I am not painting, I feel disoriented, not knowing where I really am. Putting paint onto the canvas is where I find my bearings, at the intersection of the image and the brush. A glimpse of landscape becomes a structure on which to put paint, and that place becomes submerged in the process of painting. Place and paint merge in a synthesis that is something new, apart from that which I originally encountered. A painting emerges from my meeting with it, and the place itself floats back away into the wilderness.”
Janice Anthony received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston University. Her paintings have been chosen for numerous regional, national, and international exhibitions, including “Re-Presenting Realism VI” at the Arnot Museum, Elmira, New York, the 2011 Biennial, Center for Maine Contemporary Arts, Rockport Maine, the 2008 Contemporary Realism Biennial, Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and has had numerous one-person shows at galleries including the Frost-Gully Gallery in Freeport, Maine, and the Sherry French Gallery in New York, New York. Her paintings have been included in the books Paintings of Maine, a New Collection, Carl Little and Arnold Skolnik; Paintings of the Maine Winter, Carl Little and Arnold Skolnik; The Artist and the American Landscape, John Driscoll; and Paintings of Maine Islands, Carl Little and Arnold Skolnik; as well as in articles in Art New England, American Arts Quarterly, and American Art Collector.
Website
http://janiceanthony.com
