Janet Fish - Tropical Still Life
American, b.1938
Tropical Still Life, 1992
Screenprint, 36 x 42 inches
Edition 26/75
John Szoke Graphics, Inc.
02.021

Gift of William J. Lutz and Karen Wicklund Lutz (MBA '78)

Janet Fish was born in Boston in 1938 to a family of artists. After being raised in Bermuda, she received her MFA from Yale. She took many sculpture classes, then found her calling through painting. She graduated in 1963. Janet Fish then began her search for her own unique style. She began to paint glass bottles and vases. Janet found that she was talented in dissecting the way in which the light broke up the forms. Soon she was painting every glass object she could find. Janet Fish's artwork is unique in that there is no central focal point. Her paintings draw the viewers' eyes through the painting, never resting on a single element. Her earliest paintings were mainly in black and white (Wine and Cheese Glasses, 1975), while her later paintings literally exploded with color.

She thinks of herself as a "painterly realist," primarily interested in light, atmosphere, motion, and lush, saturated color. She has made prints since the early 1970s and is associated with both the American print renaissance and neo-realist movements of the period. In Tropical Still Life, she offers the viewer ripe tropical fruits that spill off an orange glass plate that rests upon a patterned floral tablecloth. A green and yellow parakeet perches on one of the fruits, presiding over a truly Caribbean still life. Lyrical in effect, this still nonetheless joins a traditional western format that sweetly alludes to the transience of life's pleasures.