One doesn’t need to be a fortune-teller to safely predict the following: the further we proceed into the flickering digital lights of our pixilated 21st Century, the more important paintings will eventually become in all our lives. In fact, we must reconsider what might be called the magic of the painted surface: the alluring domain of handmade images embodied on physical supports. This is alchemy in action, captured in the fleeting emotions of paint, and shared in fugitive glances toward both nature itself and our own interior spaces. Thus we can best think of paintings as psychic postcards sent across acres of time. We have all heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and also that every picture tells a story. This is essentially true, and every Janna Watson picture tells a story too, even though that story is not necessarily a linear narrative. Nonetheless, the organic spiritual nature of our shared dreams is clearly visible here. In today’s digitally saturated realm of instantaneous images, some not even made by human beings at all, nothing will be more uniquely prized than original works of visual art executed in oil and mixed media.

Subsequent to graduating with honours from the Ontario College of Art and Design two decades ago, and with over forty exhibitions in her aesthetic archive, Watson is a Toronto-based mid-career artist whose ample success and recognition, both critically (an abundance of high profile coverage by top art media, writers and curators) and commercially (an impressive array of private and corporate collectors amidst an ongoing curve of public exposure) has achieved the acclamation level one might associate more with a senior artist with many years behind their professional practice. In an age of ever accelerating technological innovations, there’s something reassuring, maybe even fetishistic, about such a devotion to the art of physical painting on tangible surfaces we can actually touch. This physical empathy is even more evident in an avid adherence to the classical modernist realm of biomorphic abstraction, and in her devotion to the deeply human element of perceptual mindfulness.

In fact, paradoxically the technologies for the accurate mimetic rendering of reality have quickly given rise to an even more heightened and highly spiritual kind of abstraction, and to dramatically advanced forms of seeing such as Watson’s. Her images often share a certain aesthetic affinity with some of the modernist works of the early to mid-20th Century, and with a formal movement focused on primal energies. Each Watson painting is an act of active witnessing: one which requests us to quiet our busy minds long enough to listen with our eyes to the gentle whispers it offers as a gift to our overworked retinas. Her glacial slowness and pristine void spaces present a polychrome field of vision, one that reminds us of certain musical compositions. She reminds us all that in the end, all fine paintings are a special sort of frozen music, a unique feat accomplished by her ongoing respect for what has been called the original aura of one of a kind artifacts.

Watson has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in a multitude solo exhibitions. Her work has appeared in notable public collections including those of TD Bank, CIBC, Telus, the Ritz-Carlton, ONi ONE, the Soho Metropolitan Hotel, and Saks Fifth Avenue. In 2013, she was commissioned to create an impressive, 11 x 32 ft painting for the lobby of AURA, Canada’s tallest residential building. Watson’s paintings also circulate regularly at international art fairs, including Art Toronto, Art Miami, Hamptons Fine Art, Art Taipei, San Francisco and in Seattle, where they were featured by Artsy in its list of “10 Works to Collect at the Seattle Art Fair.” Watson’s pieces have been covered by publications such as The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, NOW Magazine, and House & Home. Her upcoming exhibitions continue her active involvement in the contemporary art field at a high profile level, with shows planned for Laura Rathe Fine Arts, Dallas & Houston; Newzones Gallery at the San Francisco Art Fair; and a Fall Solo Exhibition at Sugarlift Gallery in New York’s renowned Chelsea neighbourhood. Watson also manages Studio Watson, a related enterprise dedicated to dramatically redefining our interiors with hand-tufted floor pieces inspired by the artist’s abstract compositions. She lives and works in Toronto, and is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery in both Toronto and Vancouver.