I’m excited to announce that this month from May 5th through May 30th, I’m the featured artist at Art In The Valley Gallery downtown Corvallis, Oregon. I’ve been a part of this gallery for over 20 years and have had several featured artist shows there, but this show was a fun challenge to put together since it has a lot of smaller paintings, all brand new this year.
On Sunday we hung the show, and before leaving I laid everything down on our kitchen floor to get an idea of how to best hang each piece and to try and come up with some kind of plan.
The title of my show is “Creative Diversity” which comes from my love of different subject matter and art materials. I’ve never been an artist that could stick to just one genre or medium for long, being way too curious and fascinated by new ideas, and always ready to experiment and learn new techniques. January this year, I started daily painting and joined the Daily Paintworks gallerywhich has given me incentive to paint often. To keep motivated I’ve painted fish, birds, flowers and landscapes. I’ve used pastels, watercolors, and acrylics, painted on paper, Aquaboard and canvas. The hardest thing about this show was picking which paintings to display! What should be the connecting link? That was when I figured out there wasn’t much of a connection except for the disconnection! Hence “Creative Diversity”, a chance to embrace variety, with the cohesive factor being they were all visions and concepts I wanted to share.
I did narrow it down to just displaying my fish, “feathers” (birds and actual feather paintings) and some of my latest experiments: landscapes on Yupo paper.
Please join me for a reception / party at the gallery during the Corvallis Arts Walk, May 21st from 4:00-8:00 pm. I’d love to see you! The show will be up the whole month of May, so if you’re downtown, swing by, check it out, and see what else is new at Art In The Valley Gallery.
Jana R. Johnson, Artist 