Jeanne Carbonetti  |  Jocelyn Grayson | Ric Kasini Kadour

Where Harry Dayton's work starts from the outside of things and takes the viewer toward the inside, the work of acrylic painter Janet Fredericks moves in the opposite direction. The theme of emergence is so profound and even seductive in her work that to view them firsthand is to feel a bit like Odysseus hearing the call of the Sirens. You just want to enter her space, and let her paintings continue their merging to include you as well.

This is exactly what happened to me when I saw them recently at the prestigious Stratton Arts Festival. The number of works of art and people in this one space can be dizzying, and after having been filled to visual capacity, I rounded a bend and beheld three of Janet's Boat Paintings. Suddenly, the world went silent, and the evocative voice of the Siren was heard. One has the sense from Janet's paintings that the world of spirit is bigger than the world of matter, that this is where we start and where we return. Though the world of matter is clearly present, it is a world that quietly builds itself out of the stuff of spirit and is never really separate from it. And even more than this, one gets the feeling that we have had a glimpse of a form which has "gelled" into what we would call reality, like a vision in the fog. But even now it is moving back into its first nature, Spirit. And it moves over us the same, enfolding us with whispers of our first nature, too.

It is the energy of the feminine yin nature, not in the stereotypical attitude of delicate, or timid, or pretty, but rather in the archetypal presence of the Great Feminine Creatrix of the universe, powerful and profound, embracing, and swallowing all things in an ever constant rhythm of forming and dissolving. It is the world of the Great Mother. It is the world of feeling.

And it is the better part of Janet's process, as well. She is very careful to keep this other language that her images speak away from the world of words and analysis. Her reverence for this sacred space from which the paintings come is central to her working. Though she begins with studies of images she sees around her in her environment, she draws and redraws until she makes a deep connection and some greater understanding and expression is revealed. It is this revelation which begins the painting itself. Drawing helps Janet penetrate the core of the thing, until she arrives and its true nature, and like meditation, once she is present in this place, her obligation is to simply be with it. It is then that her chosen medium of acrylics allows her plenty of time to feel her way, without figuring, sometimes with transparent washes that slide and flow, sometimes with layers of impasto which create a pause and then build to a flourish. Like Persephone emerging from the great underworld, she brings the seeds of new life with her, enfolding us in their oceanic rhythm.

4/10/01

Ric Kasini Kadour in Art New England, August/September 2005

Natural Language: Drawings and Paintings by Janet Fredericks
Walkover Gallery, Bristol, VT

Nature is to the work of Janet Fredericks as North African mythology was to German artist Michael Buthe, who collected and used artifacts—pieces of fabric, feathers, and other assorted emblems and fetishes—to fabricate a personal language based on an adopted mythology. Frederick´s longstanding interest in documenting and communicating with imagery pulled from the most intimate, most subtle parts of nature comes through in a recent exhibit of her work, Natural Language.

Common Ground is a large ochre piece that employs broad blots and scratches and smooth paintwork to create an elaborate composition marked by a kinetic field of yellows that breaks to reveal flora and fruiting berries. If art teaches us to see, Common Ground teaches us that the broad, sometimes hazy perspective is often as beautiful as the small, intimate details. This painting offers both for us to contrast.

Moments, perspective, and subtle detail define Frederick´s paintings. Large canvases offer a virtual theme park of color and technique. Fredericks has a special ability to put her talent in the service of the larger idea. The result is work in which the visual stimulus compliments the emotional fortitude of the painting.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower... (48" x 48", acrylic on canvas, 2002) is an abstract piece showing a murky orange and yellow field behind a blooming blue iris. The title is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem of the same name. The iris bloom emerges from the painting like a cell floating in blood or pollen in the wind. The work exhibits a certain melancholy: The iris in full billowy bloom, its petals will soon brown and drop off. The time of the iris is at its glorious end.