Artist - Janet Fish

Janet Fish is a contemporary realist painter and printmaker who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1938, and raised on the island of Bermuda. She is best known for her still life paintings, but also sometimes includes figures and landscapes in her work. As a student at Yale, her realistic approach was not always encouraged, except by Alex Katz, who told her to just go outside and paint the landscape. This would be in sharp contrast to the rigorous intellectualism often seen in prestigious university art programs, where figurative painting may be presented as inferior to abstract or conceptual work.

Although labeled a photorealist, she says that she is not a photorealist painter. An example of photorealism is the early work of painter Chuck Close. Fish may work from photographs, but it appears that often her paintings are composites of many photographs, which she rearranges to form her compositions. Her paintings seem to have more of a painter's than a photographer's eye.

I noticed that most of what I was able to find online was still life… setups of flowers, vases and jars of canned fruit to be specific. The amazing thing about the majority of her work is the amount of reflectivity/transparency in her work. I crap my pants when thinking about having to draw, paint or do anything that has to represent something transparent. I guess it’s my lack of experience mostly. When I stop to think about it, I’ve never even actually tried! I guess the fear has kept me from trying for all these years.

At any rate, here are a few of them for you to check out.