Leonardo da Vinci, the great polymath himself, urged in his notebook to, first study science, which was exactly the approach I took to art.   My first degree was in botany prior to studying painting in the Cradle of the Renaissance, Florence, Italy, living and working there for a decade.  My current studio is a singular and inspirational former chapel in the expansive, contemplative rural East Midlands of England.  Like my work, which goes in cycles this context represents both a return to origin and part of a continual evolution.

Through rythmic algorithms based on movements encountered in painting I articulate forms that mediate between the abstract and representational built around certain themes.  These include the concept of the ideal landscape and allusions to biological origins. By laminating the surface with successive interventions in the emerging forms I move towards a whole that passes from the chaotic into the resolved using different motifs to weave connections between and within the natural and human worlds.

J. Waring 2009

 

 

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

 

 

Despite a preoccupation with the animal world, Janet Waring describes nature neither by biological conventions nor does she idealise her themes.  There is a deliberate understatement of the human element latent in her paintings as if to detach herself from sociological intepretations.  Her consciousness is in the spirit of the shamanistic cave artist urged to make their mark by a process akin to divining.   In her painting the act of placing and finding forms becomes inseparable, this duality being expressed at the edges of her suspended entities.

Alexis Rago, 2009

 

 

 

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things."

Walt Whitman