From childhood interests to a mid-life passion for artmaking, this Texas artist has carved a creative course uniquely her own.
We first met Janet L. Haynes in her space at the back of Echo in Johnson City during one of the town’s monthly art walks. Since then we’ve found ourselves returning to contemplate her beautiful skyscapes. (In fact, if you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen a video of her and her work in our IGTV feed earlier this summer.)
Thinking you too might enjoy her work we sent along a few questions. Janet’s thoughtful answers appear below.
On what sparked her passion for art
“I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t interested in art. My uncle gave me my first set of paints when I was less than 10 years old. I always wanted the box of crayons with more colors. I remember being most content either quietly reading a book or drawing. I was always fascinated with trees; I have found old sketchbooks from when I was maybe 12 or 13, lots of trees! I don’t think any one thing or person sparked my interest in art–just the world and how I saw it. I have rotated back and forth between drawing, painting, and other forms of expression throughout my life. Always exploring, but always creating, it is a necessity of my world! If it meant sitting on my living room floor at the age of thirty-something with an old sheet of watercolor paper and a box of crayons–I was creating! Seeing what I could make the materials do!”
On her education
“I am not a degreed artist, but an art explorer. I always took all of the art classes that I could in school. I remember taking an architectural drafting class my senior year in high school where the instructor tried to get me to drop the class, as I was the only female student. I completed it with an ‘A.’ I attended Texas A&M University in College Station to continue a family tradition, but I took every art class I could through the Department of Environmental Design, a.k.a. Architecture. I learned that my favorite professor, Joseph Donaldson, came to the TAMU campus the year I was born to start their art program, yet there was still no official degreed program when I graduated! I continued absorbing every art class that I could, through the university and in the surrounding Bryan/College Station area. I ended up with a degree in Philosophy and a minor in Environmental Design, with one semester in between taking night classes at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Now, that is another story!”
On her professional life
“My jobs after university always included some use of art and creativity, whether it was working for TAMU Press and learning about book design, as a NASA subcontractor creating technical drawings, charts and viewgraph presentations before everyone had a computer on their desk, or serving as a web designer when the World Wide Web was still very young.”
On her Hill Country ties
“I moved to the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1990s. I was lucky enough to meet my life partner and biggest supporter after arriving. I love the sense of community we have here and the growing importance of the arts in this community. It is a very nurturing place for an artist. It is pretty amazing that Johnson City is now the home of eight art galleries in the downtown area, not to mention all the artists and creative types surrounding the town. You can’t help but be inspired by it all.”
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Above: Janet L. Haynes’ art work as shared earlier this year via our Instagram account.
On exhibiting her work–and her Johnson City ties
“I have shown in various group shows along with a few gallery stints throughout my adult life, but have been showing most actively for about the last 8-10 years. After a health scare about 10 years ago, I decided it was now or never and really dug in to create art and find ways to show my work. I was represented and encouraged by Susan Kirchman at Kirchman Gallery between 2012 and 2014. I have been represented locally by Linda Haddock at Echo in Johnson City since about 2014, more recently opening my own gallery space, JLHaynes.studio Gallery, in the Echo building in June of 2017. I currently have work with A Propos Pop Up Gallery. I have participated in Group shows at Art on 12 in Wimberley and the Bunkhouse Gallery every spring since 2014. I continue to enter juried shows and look for other avenues of getting my art out into the world.”
On her love of Hill Country clouds
“In the late spring or early summer of 2016 I was working on a painting (Ethereal Moments) on the front porch of Echo during the monthly Johnson City Art Walk. This painting became the inspiration for a series titled Head in the Clouds, which I first exhibited as Echo’s featured artist during the October 2016 Art Walk. Very often, after completing a painting, I am drawn into a small portion of that painting. I become almost obsessed with it, recreating that small section with a sense of discovery, and follow the journey to see where it will take me! Such was the case with a small piece of the sky in the painting Ethereal Moments. That small section inspired a 24” x 24” painting, Cosmic Split which led me to continue exploring clouds, creating the series Head in the Clouds with what was supposed to be the final painting of that series including a self portrait of my head in the clouds.
At least I thought it was going to be the final Head in the Clouds painting . . . while I may have officially completed that series, I am still obsessed with Texas Hill Country clouds and sky! I am forever drawn to observing the sky, and it’s various elusive forms. When I see a bright blue one–or storms, sunrises, sunsets, or heavy cloud shadows silhouetted by the sun–I am fascinated! I photograph and photograph some more, but still end up painting what is in my mind. It’s an experiment in vision and imagination. I love the unexpected surprise when I walk back into the studio and see an image, a creature or a vision of some kind appear in the shapes of the clouds in the piece on my easel. Just like when we were children and lay looking up at the clouds to see how many shapes we could find. It seems that I am not ‘finished’ playing with the clouds as they continue to be the focus of my current work, not just the background for the landscapes and trees.”
On artistic and personal moods
“While my current work seems to be somewhat ‘light and happy,’ that has not always been the case. Expressing myself through my art has seen me through some of the most difficult times of my life. I have used it as a way to work through hard choices and struggles–where the troll comes out of the woods, maybe with the trunk or limbs of the tree taking on human form–to help me conquer my demons. It is also a way to express happiness and joy. It’s always very personal to me.”
On her inspiration
“My inspiration comes from the world around me and from inside myself. My emotions, the sky, trees, nature, my imagination, my current circumstances, the news, the world– inspiration for my work is endless.
My process includes many steps and may take hours—or it may take days. When I think a painting is complete, I like to let it rest for a while before I start applying layers of cold wax medium. I am typically working on more than one piece at a time in various stages of preparation and completion . . . . Once I decide a painting is really ready, I start to apply layers of cold wax medium. Sometimes I will come back with more pastel, either Pan Pastels, or occasionally oil pastels to enhance a color or layer translucent shades of color on top of and around other colors, enhancing and creating yet another level. Sometimes I will shave pastel into the cold wax medium making ‘paint’ and layer that over the existing painting, at times scraping through part of it and creating and exposing something new. I will incise into the wax with large carbon pencils or sharp objects. It is about manipulating, hiding, exposing, and all the while creating! I am finding that some of my more recent work is becoming more abstract – still representative of clouds, or whatever, but looser, allowing the imagination of the viewer some space for their own interpretation.
I first started including cold wax medium in my process about two or three years ago. I found that I loved working with pastels, but was always bothered by having to put a piece of glass between the art and the viewer, causing a separation and a distancing. After experimenting with different methods of stabilizing and sealing the pastels, I settled on incorporating cold wax medium, which has in turn opened my work up to an entirely new level – still exploring! Stay tuned as the exploration continues; see where I push it, including the use of encaustic. Through all the twists and turns of my life, I have always found a way and time to create art. Art is what has kept me sane.”
On being authentic
“I don’t want to perfect someone else’s way of doing art. I want to find my own way and push my limits in expression and how I use a medium. Art is a journey – as an artist, I hope the journey never ends as I continue to grow, evolve and discover, exploring processes, the world around me and myself. Escape into the clouds, the work, the art itself.”
Thank you, Janet!
Readers–you can find this artist at JLHaynes.studio Gallery inside Echo in Johnson City (100 N Nugent Ave #0704, Johnson City, TX 78636) . Note that the gallery space is open every day except Tuesday. In addition to her paintings, she also offers blank greeting cards based on her paintings as well as original pencil drawings in oversized frames for purchase. You can also keep up with her via her website and her newsletter as well as on Facebook and Instagram.
Thanks for reading!
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Another great write up of yet another talented jewel right here in the hill country. I have had the pleasure of knowing Janet for just a few years now and count her as a friend and dedicated artist. Her unique voice as expressed in her art shines through in every piece.