My work has always been about putting small pieces together and overlapping to add depth or make a larger piece. The basic materials have changed over time from etching with Chine colle to beach plastic assemblages to collages using paper memorabilia: stamps, sweet wrappers, tickets, old maps or letters to watercolours. Now I am reinvestigating the use of fabrics and wax. I like to use old, cotton fabric that is dyed and waxed with beeswax. The pieces are knotted or stitched together with linen thread, the kind used by book-binders.

After many years of abstract work I am now looking outside at the world around me, influenced by dreams and memories and making portraits sometimes of people, occasionally animals or birds, creating a family in my studio. I never know who is going to arrive until they are here.

A Fine Art Graduate from Reading University, I taught Art, painting and printmaking, in schools and colleges in London for many years. For two and a half years I lived in the USA studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts and this experience influenced my work away from realism into abstraction. Much inspiration is found looking at Hans Hofmann, Anne Ryan, Paul Klee, Sean Scully, Gees Bend Quilters and Japanese Boro pieced work.

Elected a full Member of the South West Academy (SWAc) in 2019.

Contact

Email info@janetmitchell.co.uk

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