Janice Porter
lives in Chico, California, where she completed her MFA degree in Painting and Drawing at California State University in 2006. She served as the interim director of Chico's 1078 Gallery in 2007. She has taught drawing, painting, and art appreciation classes as CSU, Chico, and is currently teaching drawing classes at Shasta College in Redding, CA.
Janice was born and raised near Chicago, in Highland Park, Illinois. She completed her BFA at Kansas City Art Institute, and moved to Minneapolis. There, she painted & exhibited, worked as a graphic designer, taught workshops in drawing, painting, and book arts, illustrated children's books, served as a community organizer in the arts, and raised 3 sons with writer Anthony Peyton Porter.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In both daily living and art, I am constantly probing the place where the physical and non-physical meet. My artworks help me conjure these meetings.
I experience everything as alive, so I tend to personify the objects I depict. Many of the objects I choose are man made, ones that to me are elegantly simple and potent in how their form is married to their function.
I choose organic objects for any number of reasons: melons are sensual, trees are commanding, oranges are a lovely substitute for a baseball.
Regarding the ugly, I find it in too many places where man has trod. Suffice it to say, this can provoke an ongoing tragedy in my psyche and senses. Rather than die from this, I mine for gems of form and ambiance.
My works are becoming experiential (rather than rational) narratives. Plants, street furniture, and backyard objects take on the emotions, thoughts, and actions of people I know.
The whole point for me is to explore the metaphysical possibilities of reality in a pictorial way.