Janet Stafford

I am a painter living and working in New York City.

I have always worked in series—streams of thoughts and desires common to us all, represented by images. I see the images as signs of the material world, intimations of the nonmaterial.

At first my series were narrative, encompassing quotidian aspects such as romantic love and building construction. And I considered ideas—enlightenment, science, memory. Now I am thinking about nature and our planet, as so many of us are. My intention is to paint about life and the inevitable beauty, portal to the sublime.

For my series, I think a long time about what I want to talk about, then I photograph that idea and use those photographs as the basis for eight to twenty paintings, all of which have typically been on one or two supports. The series I am working on now, Natural History, is a little different. It comprises 33 separate canvases.

MFA University of Tennessee

2017 Exquisite Pittoresco, Keystone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Thru the Rabbit Hole 2, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Fridge Art Fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, The Betsy Hotel, Miami, FL
Memory In Forms, Neutra Institute, Los Angeles, CA
Fridge Art Fair, Angel Orensantz Arts Center, New York, NY
Vantage Points, ArtSpace64, New York, NY
Thru the Rabbit Hole, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Postcards From the Edge, Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, New York, NY (AIDS benefit)
Alternative Nature, Electric Picture House, Cheshire, England
2015 Electric Open, Electric Picture House, Cheshire, England
Vantage Points, ArtSpace64, New York, NY
Circle the Wagons III, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2014 SACI Art Blog, Florence, Italy
Off the Wall, London, England
The Last Brucennial, New York, NY
2013 Open Doors project at Fórum Eugénio de Almeida, Évora, Portugal
5x7, Austin Museum of Art-Arthouse, Austin, TX
Postcards From the Edge, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY (AIDS benefit)
2012 Brucennial, New York, NY
Postcards From the Edge, Cheim & Read Gallery, New York, NY
True Blue, Los Angeles, CA
2011 Annual Open Studio, China Brilliance Gallery, New York, NY
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