Janet Fish

Janet Fish (born May 18, 1938) is a contemporary American realist artist.

Through oil painting, lithography, and screenprinting, she explores the interaction of light with everyday objects in the still life genre.

Many of her paintings include elements of transparency (plastic wrap, water), reflected light, and multiple overlapping patterns depicted in bold, high color values.

She has been credited with revitalizing the still life genre.

Janet Isobel Fish was born on May 18, 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was raised in Bermuda, where her family moved when she was ten years old.

From a young age, she was surrounded by many artistic influences.

Her father was professor of art history Peter Stuyvesant Fish and her mother was sculptor and potter Florence Whistler Voorhees.

Her sister, Alida, is a photographer.

Her grandfather, whose studio was in Bermuda, was American Impressionist painter Clark Voorhees.

Her uncle, also named Clark Voorhees, was a wood carver and his wife, a painter.

Fish knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue the visual arts.

She said, "I came from a family of artists, and I always made art and knew I wanted to be an artist."

Fish was talented in ceramics and she initially intended to be a sculptor.

As a teenager, Fish was an assistant in the studio of sculptor Byllee Lang.

Fish attended Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, concentrating on sculpture and printmaking.

She studied under George Cohn, Leonard Baskin, and Mervin Jules.

She spent one of her summers studying at the Art Students League of New York and attended a painting class led by Stephen Greene.

Fish received a Bachelor of Arts from Smith in 1960.

Fish enrolled at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut, attending from 1960 to 1963.

There she changed her focus from sculpture to painting.

Her instructor for an introductory painting class was Alex Katz, who encouraged students to explore the shows in New York galleries which expanded Fish's knowledge of the art world.

During that period, art schools tended to favor the teaching of Abstract Expressionism, influencing Fish's burgeoning artistic style.

She soon developed her own direction noting that "Abstract Expressionism didn't mean anything to me. It was a set of rules."

Her fellow Yale students included Chuck Close, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Nancy Graves, Sylvia and Robert Mangold, and Rackstraw Downes.

This was followed by a summer residency at The Skowhegan School of Art in Skowhegan, Maine in 1961.

In 1963, Fish became one of the first women to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Yale's School of Art and Architecture.

Fish largely rejected the Abstract Expressionism endorsed by her Yale instructors feeling "totally disconnected" from it and desiring instead the "physical presence of objects".

Undaunted by the dogma of pure abstraction which reigned in her formative years, Janet Fish connected with images in the real world.

Rooted in the Modernist formal tradition and the Dutch still life genre tradition, her work adheres to the world of concrete contemporary experience.

Fish's simple, familiar subjects are rendered with formal complexity, richness of detail and the vibrant, tropical palette of her childhood.

Fish is interested in painting light and a concept she has on occasion called "packaging", such as jars, cellophane, and wrappers.

Among her other favorite subjects are everyday objects, especially various kinds of clear glassware, either empty or partially filled with liquids such as water, liquor, or vinegar.

Examples range from glasses, bottles, goblets, and jars to a fishbowl filled with water and a goldfish.

Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces.

Although Fish's work has been characterized as Photorealist or New Realism, she does not consider herself a photorealist.

Elements, such as her composition and use of color, demonstrate the view of a painter rather than a photographer.

After graduating from Yale, Fish spent a year in Philadelphia then moved to SoHo where she became friends with Louise Nevelson.

Fish was an art instructor at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons The New School for Design (both in New York City), Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York), and the University of Chicago.

Fish had two short-lived marriages, which she claims were unsuccessful at least partly due to her high ambitions and her reluctance to be a "good conventional housewife".

She resides, and paints, in her SoHo, New York City loft and her Vermont farmhouse in Middletown Springs.