Janet Bogardus is a San Francisco Bay Area painter and mixed-media artist. Since 1989, she has exhibited her work at a variety of venues in California and New York, including solo exhibitions at Gearbox Gallery’s Inner Room and Manna Gallery in Oakland; Benicia Arts
Presents; Contra Costa College; and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art.

Born in Montreal, she spent her early life in many different countries, including Czechoslovakia, Algeria, Canada, Germany, Viet Nam and France. Living in a variety of environments and cultures has attuned her to the ways landscape and history intertwine, a focus which can be
seen in all her work.

In 1990, she received an MFA from San Francisco State University with a concentration on printmaking and artist books.

She has taught art through Columbia College, Chapman University, and the California Arts Council. Currently she teaches drawing and mixed-media classes at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, CA.

Her work can be viewed by appointment at her studio in Novato or at: www.janetbogardus.net

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About “Signal”:

“Signal” grew out of a happy technological accident.
As my television began breaking down, its images were filtered through a
dazzling, pulsing array of neon static, which I captured on my iPhone.
I created a set of digital prints from the TV photos, some of which also
incorporated images of my own ink drawings of forested landscapes.

The collaged paintings in Signal are created from my digital prints, upon which layers of acrylic paint and ink have been added to form hybrid landscapes which embody many suggested realities.

My feelings about this series are complicated. I’ve begun to see the paintings as questioning our present moment of onrushing technical, environmental and social change: How do we feel about the fragmentations and uncanny interferences around and within us? The beauty of neon static can seem alien, but it is also part of nature’s energy streaming though the environment and our bodies. A forest is a hum of electric energy, as are our bodies.