Janet Filomeno_Artist Page
Janet Filomeno
Janet Filomeno: As the Sea Rises
Filomeno is best known for her large-scale gestural abstract paintings that employ the use of a variety of materials such as ink, mica, shellac, acrylic paint, graphite, charcoal and at times collage. By use of her physical action such as pouring, flinging, throwing colorful liquids onto the stretched canvas on the floor she is able to re-enact the movement one might sense in oceans, rivers, and other bodies of water. It is an intuitive process she follows as she uses the physicality of her body to move/shift the canvas in various directions to create a heightened sense of movement and dramatic composition as each layer is poured. As various organic forms and liquids collide together on the canvas one can experience the reference to water and all of its associations in both a physical and metaphorical way. It is these associations that she pursues along with an emotive use of color that bring into focus the physicality of life and our physical selves.
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Filomeno’s most recent series “Blue Crystals Revisited” grew out of reference to her previous series “Blue Crystals Series” following 9/11, 2002-2004. Here again, nature is embodied through pools of translucent sapphire blues that reflect an oceanic experience of troubled waters.
“I revisited this past series because these turbulent times feel somewhat similar. Climate change, political change, all of the many ongoings occurring in our society today seem to recall that experience.”
Bodies of water are a continuous theme that runs throughout her many different series. Filomeno seeks visual metaphors and metaphysical connections to form a collective experience of the internal and external.