The art of today. My favorite contemporary painter: JANET HILL

Hi everyone! I am very excited to share with you one of my favorite present day artist, whom I admire and follow ever since I discovered her paintings. I hope I will succeed in writing a nice article about her (more like a short biography + some of my thoughts) and arouse your interest for her work.

I’ve been delighting my eyes with her paintings for at least 7 years now, so I thought I should write something about her because there are many people who would love her work but don’t know about her yet.

Her name is Janet Hill, she is a canadian painter. She studied art at the Queens University in Kingston Ontario.

Janet Hill opened a fancy soap store and owned it for some years, until she decided to paint full time. In this store she exhibited some of her paintings (in the picture below, in the left corner you can see some early paintings). This store looks so amazing… I would have loved to buy beauty products (and art, maybe?) from this store!

In 2008 and 2009 she created a new painting every single day and posted it on her website. I think it is absolutely amazing that she made approximately 700 paintings in just 2 years, this helping her define her own style and technique. I’ve been following her blog and I clearly saw an improvement of her subjects, techniques and overall creativity throughout the months and years. I think Janet Hill is a good example for the saying “Practice makes perfect”.

Her art is sweet, girly, sometimes silly, optimistic, funny and warm. It is the kind of art that makes your day better, happier. I’m saying this literally, not in a complicated, metaphorical way.

Janet Hill is certainly a 21st Century post-modernist painter, leaving behind the 20th Century art crisis, exploring new, girly, feminine and optimist emotions in art. Janet Hill is feminine, whereas a  20th Century artist would have been feminist.

Janet Hill’s paintings aren’t meant to shock the eye or the expectations of the viewer, they are simply ment to bring joy to those contemplating them.

The funny and comic subtext of her paintings must also be mentioned. For instance, she once created a series of paintings depicting girls with supernatural powers. In the picture below you can see the painting cleverly named The Invisible Nature Of Tansy Fairchild.

The clever and punny titles are a constant feature of Janet Hill’s paintings. Reading her blog, I always enjoyed these titles. See the picture below with the title: The Disappearance of Lonnie Lightfoot.

What kind of art is this, you might ask. One could label it as naive art. This is a modern art current, successful in 20th Century, but rooted in 17th Century or even earlier. Although I would characterize her art style as naive, the painters that I think they share something similar with Janet Hill aren’t always considered naive. I have many painters in mind, but I will try to keep it short and name just a few.

One of them is Bernard Boutet de Monvel with his clean, sleek, optimist paintings.

Another painter is Frida Kahlo. I think sometimes Janet Hill tends to use this kind of colors (and animals):

Yet another similar painter might be Henri Rousseau.

There are many other painters who deserve to be mentioned, but this article would become too big :). I should although point out Gauguin’s Tahitian women who somehow resemble in posture to those painted sometimes by Janet Hill.

Besides her wonderful paintings, what I like about Janet Hill is her tenacity and the inexhaustible creativity flow that underlies her paintings.

She is truly inspiring and I absolutely love her and her work! ❤❤❤

P.S. When I started this blog I searched a long time for an image for my website’s header. I wanted it to depict a girl reading a book, but really reading, not just posing. It was EXTREMELY hard to find one. I was shocked to see the lack of this kind of women’s representation in painting. Another great thing about Janet Hill is that she painted lots of women reading books. Here are just a few of them:

P.S.2: Another cool thing about her paintings is that every girl can identify herself in one of the paintings. For instance, this is me: 🙂

I really hope you liked this article and Janet Hill’s paintings.

You can also follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Hugs and kisses!