Janet Grissom has been revisiting her youth when she had the desire to create but not the tools she needed to do so. Her latest body of work goes back to that childhood and captures the imagery that inspired her as a young girl. “Frequently, I go back to that daily country journey on that yellow school bus that introduced me to the landscape of the Midwest,” Grissom shares. “It allowed me to move from the individual leaf, flower and tree to the overall ambiance of the season. It was fall that was especially memorable as the seasonal winds blew the brightly colored leaves, drained of their traditional green and replaced with vibrant oranges, reds and yellows glowing through to the world.” It was during those memorable bus journeys, that Grissom was first struck with ideas of making paintings about these colorful spaces that came alive in her mind. 
Merriment, oil on canvas, 30 x 30"
Red Roof, oil on canvas, 36 x 24"
Winds Whirled, oil on canvas, 18 x 24"
“I visualized chromatic shapes dancing across a canvas, sometimes more realistic, other times my imagination slipped into the mind, allowing more feeling and freedom than the actual landscape provided,” she continues. “When I arrived home, I was tired and did not have access to the paint and canvases I needed. Recently, I have been reflecting on those images and all the happiness they bring to my soul. Several paintings have been created out of this place of reflection. These are aspects of my experiences that I was not able to capture through art at the time, and now they are finding their way to my canvas. Painting what I feel about spaces of my present day views and the past vistas, along with a bit of my imagination, is very comforting. In the words of Van Gogh, ‘Paint things not as they are…but as they feel.’” —
Want to See More?
www.janetgrissompaintings.com
paintingsbygrissom@gmail.com
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