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JANICE SUGG
Janice Sugg is a Colorado native, raised in the Denver area. She has been a Colorado artist for more than 25 years. Initially, for more than a decade, she painted colorful, abstract wildflower designs on her handmade white stoneware.
In 2001 Janice changed mediums to oil painting on linen and canvas. She has studied painting under several well known artists including Quang Ho, Carol Mack, Molly Davis, Patti Andre, and Lani Vandervleen. In addition to studio painting she paints plein-air, mostly in New Mexico near Taos, in Colorado near the Boulder/Longmont area where she lives, and in Estes Park.
She paints in her studio near Longmont, Colorado on a small horse ranch. Her imagery depicts area landscapes, often using pastoral scenes of horses and cows grazing.
An Alliance with the Horizon
The Western Horizon Paintings of Janice Sugg
The horizon is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most
mystifying. Like the rainbow it can never be reached. It is the uneasy interface
between earth and sky. Untouchable; no matter how close we get, still it
recedes. As much an offspring of air currents as of solid ground; malleable
according to the whims of atmospheric-topography. It is a separate entity, the
glue that bonds earth and space. It is the creation of a celestial forge,
hammered by fiery sunlight upon the anvil of the inflexible earth--yet calmed
by the night. An apt terrain for the imagination.
It can be the most vivid of phenomena. On rare clear days the horizon is
encased in a clarity as brittle as glass. Crystalline, cut along a distinct, razor thin
line; critically sharp--a slender link, pressed into an invisible thread. It can also
be one of the most illusive. Under the right conditions the sky can bleed
through the horizon, mingling and blending with the world below. As a
dividing line the horizon can be intangible--blurs and becomes a fuzzy
ambiguity, abstract and indefinable-- unlimited in its iterations, which waver in
and out of the shifting light.
Most days are not clear. Atmospheric moisture refracts the light,
shimmering like a mirage, blurring and altering our perception. Constantly
changing, near at hand and then gone, inexplicable, like a cat's-paw rippling the
placid water.
Janice Sugg's abstract western landscapes experiment with this concept
of horizon; austere western prairie bonded with a shifting sky... So much more
than just a thin line; her imagery reveals in rich layers and unusual color the
horizon's intricate variety. In her landscape the horizon twists and turns, rolls
and flows like a physical entity. It smudges, it bleeds, it splinters. Expands and
contracts, appears and is gone. And yet her horizons are restrained by a quiet
subtlety that might often go unnoticed unless consciously traced by the mind's
eye. All the consequence of an unaffected invention that results from intuitive
strokes on the canvas.
One has to get close to see the level of detail present in her work. The closer
one gets the more it expands. How can something so intricate be so simple
from a distance? Close inspection reveals a layered collage of texture and color
that underlie the imagery.
An ideal technique for an alliance with the horizon.
"My style is rather impressionistic. I am not concerned with making my scenes look absolutely real. The emotions I lay down on canvas when I'm painting and the feeling they evoke is more important to me."
I have always loved Colorado and consider painting in the West a great inspiration and privilege, as well as a challenge and adventure, considering the always changing weather conditions. I remember the smells, the temperature, and the people I've painted with; even the bugs, rain, wind, and dust."
I am especially attracted to the mood and atmosphere about me when I'm painting outdoors. I search for contrasts of cloud and landscape, of light and shadow--the unique color palate composed of ever changing light. I often feel I have become absorbed in the environment".
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