Janet Treby

The youngest of four children Janet was born in London in 1955 and grew up in a small country village in Bedfordshire. She have always loved the countryside and had a great passion for wildlife. It was at the age of around 11 years that she realised that she wanted to become an artist and had a choice between art or acting and luckily for us all, art won. Having made this choice Janet was on a mission upon leaving school and embarked on a two year foundation course at Barnfield College in Luton, followed by a degree at West Surrey College of Art and Design specialising in printmaking and sculpture.

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After learning many skills there she then went onto the Slade School of Fine Art and completed a two year post graduate in printmaking.
Whilst at the Slade School Janet started lecturing in printmaking specialising in mezzotint.

Upon leaving college Janet lived in a studio apartment in Wapping, East London and she, suppose you could say that did the ‘bohemian artist’ thing. She had already built up a successful relationship with a gallery called the Curwen Gallery who gave Janet her first one-women exhibition in the 80s. She also won a few awards – ”The Lloyds Young Printmaker of the Year” and the ”Elizabeth Greenshield award” which allowed her to paint for a year. Throughout all of this in the 80’s she was lecturing and doing other various jobs to support herself and her art. However, although it made her realise just how hard it was to earn a living was still only interested in painting full-time, she knew that she did not want to lecture full-time or do any other job for that matter – painting was my passion and still is!

Janet paint a lot of nudes as she feels that the body holds experiences, which even if the figure has its back to you it tells you its own story at that particular moment in time. We all pick up on that story on a subconscious level. So it‘s like reading a novel when looking into a painting. You see the painting and snatches of the artist all at once. It’s like laying yourself open without saying a word. It all holds memory – which creates atmosphere which speaks to everyone who looks at that painting.

Janet sells her amazing artwork online