Tangled, Acrylic on Canvas, 12” x 48” ©2019Janet Hegman Shier
Please scroll down to see examples of my paintings, books, and eco-dyed garments..
After decades of teaching about the life and art of some of my favorite artists (notably: M. Beckmann, F. Marc, M. Chagall, V. Kandinsky, P. Klee, G. Münter, and C. Salomon), I began painting, myself. My first teacher was Canadian Artist, Kristyn Watterworth, who encouraged me to follow my instincts, to dive in, and to keep going. The experience of having a teacher like Kristyn was transformative, and it gave me the permission and the confidence to do bolder experimentation (something I had always encouraged my own students to do on stage!) with my own art and teaching. Now, I work every day with acrylics, graphite crayon and charcoal, ink, and thread, making large and small paintings on canvas, as well as small “fairy tale” paintings on various surfaces (e.g., cereal boxes, junk mail, business cards and tea bags) and books. Almost everything I create reveals hidden worlds, full of creatures protecting, searching, or looking, with images suggestive of language, memory, and surprises. I want viewers to look closely, to find these elements, and imagine their stories.
For me, the process of creating makes me constantly shift between painting (or stitching or dyeing) intuitively and looking closely at the language images created embody. As with all improvisation, this is the process of acting on emerging patterns. I often paint over earlier work because I love the way layers of the past peek through. After a decade of upcycling my own art, I discovered the process of eco-dyeing, using the “dirty pot” method Nicola Brown of Clasheen, Ireland teaches. Now, I love to upcycle garments or use new cotton, linen, wool, or silk, for this environmentally sustainable process. To eco-dye and create my own designs on textiles and paper, I collect leaves on my walk, which I bundle up for a transformation in the dirty pot (dye pot) without using any dyes or added chemicals. Sometimes I use prints of my eco-dyed designs as the basis for new paintings. To me, all artistic processes can be transferred. After directing plays for 35+ years, I discovered that creating on the page or on fabric drew on my experience blocking a scene or interpreting a role. I see vignettes in everywhere and look for the essence of the organic process.
Since all of my work is intuitive, a message is often revealed to me only after I have completed a painting or eco-dyed a garment or paper. Learning to interpret and understand my own creations sometimes seems to reveal to me why I create. —Janet Hegman Shier
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Video (2.5 minutes) of paintings and a book I made recently for a friend in honor of her weaving, her research, story-telling, and writing about her Finnish roots. January 18, 2023
