Doncaster artist who died in 2019 is the subject of a powerful exhibition of paintings on display at the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum.

The paintings in the exhibition were created during the last twenty years of Janet’s life, but are the outcome of a lifetime’s devotion to art.

Janet trained as a printmaker at Manchester College of Art, leaving with a Distinction in Post Graduate Printmaking. Afterwards she worked as a freelance craftsman, making printed textiles and patchworks to commission.

It wasn’t until the 1990’s that she turned her attention to painting, working in her studio on a daily basis. The compositions that she started to make at that time were improvised from drawings made in her sketchbooks, with subject matter including public transport, cafés, and the life of the streets.

A number of those sketch books are on display in the gallery and give an insight into her inspirations.

Janet’s paintings were taken up by various galleries, leading to sales and work in private collections in Europe, with particular success in Belgium.

Her enduring love of textiles is also reflected in some of the paintings in the exhibition, like ‘Self Portrait in Batik Dress’, as well as some of her handmade clothes, which are displayed alongside the paintings.

In State Magazine Mike von Joel wrote that her subjects were traditional in essence, interiors with hints of a human presence via her totems; clothes, rumpled sheets, reflections, and the brooding grandeur of the landscape of the Pennines and Yorkshire Dales.