An Artist Speaks Season 6 Episode 4 with Guest Artist Janis Grau

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Janis Grau is thankful that she was born an artist...with an artist's eyes. As an artist she is constantly surrounded by beauty, even in what would appear to others to be a mundane setting. Within a copse of summer trees she finds thirty different hues of green...and blues and purples where those without an artist's eyes see only a clump of trees. Her artistic vision morphs the ordinary objects and entities seen by others into a world overflowing with patterns and textures, sunlight and shadow, shape and form, line and contour, hue, intensity, tint and shade. It is her wish that non-artists may be able to share this world through her paintings...that they can, for a few minutes, step out of the banal and into beauty. “When I stepped into an art classroom my first year in high school, my life reached a turning point. I had planned a career in nursing but my art teacher, Jim Laubheimer, would have none of it! With his guidance, mentoring, and encouragement, I pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, graduating in 1966. For the next thirty-five years I taught middle and high school art students in Maryland, while continuing coursework to gain a Master's equivalency + 30. I loved every minute that I spent teaching art and would have done it even if I had not been paid for doing so. Upon retiring, I re-located to southwest Florida, set up a studio and pursued the love of working in watercolor first introduced to me by my teacher and mentor. The beautiful flowers and vegetation surrounding me in sunny Florida have been a constant source of inspiration for subject matter.”