Arizona Springtime by Janet McGregor
The PebbleCreek Art Club is happy to award Janet McGregor Artist of the Month for February 2017. Janet and her husband Fred are snowbirds from Victoria, British Columbia. This is their tenth winter in PebbleCreek and they feel that they have the best of all worlds with Arizona winters and west coast summers. They live here for five and a half months each winter. They are always happy to go north in the spring and catch up with their Canadian friends and then are anxious to get here in the fall to see their southern friends and neighbors.
Janet says she never considered herself artistic, although she had two aunts who were successful artists. She has always been interested in the visual arts and has been purchasing art throughout her life. After retirement, Janet and a friend registered for a watercolor class at their local recreation center. She says they took a watercolor class because her friend already owned watercolor paints and brushes. So by the time Janet arrived here, she had taken a couple of beginner watercolor classes but was very new to painting.
Janet signed up for a watercolor class soon after they moved here in December 2007. She found that the other participants were so welcoming at that first class when she was such an inexperienced painter that it gave her the courage to join the Art Club; she has been taking classes and participating in the open studios ever since. In addition, the varieties of classes available have provided her with opportunities to work with acrylics and mixed media as well as watercolor. She appreciates the Art Club programming with the combination of resident and visiting teachers.
Janet says she’d call her subject matter eclectic but leans towards naturalistic subjects. She notes that backgrounds are important to her paintings. She continues to take classes here and in Victoria and uses the open studio time as much as possible. She appreciates the monthly art critique sessions where anyone can bring a painting and get helpful advice from the leader and other artists. Janet was inspired by the late Carol Little who initiated formal art critiques and generously shared her talent with other painters. She also values the informal assistance that the painters at the open studio sessions provide each other. Janet feels fortunate as well to be a member of a group of artists in Victoria who share a studio and meet regularly to paint.
Janet is very honored to be chosen as Artist of the Month as it is only recently that she started describing herself as an artist. She says being commissioned to create a three by five foot abstract painting was the beginning of feeling she truly is an artist. The photo above, titled Arizona Springtime, was painted in Victoria but of course, was from a photograph taken in Arizona. You are invited to view Janet’s displays in the Creative Arts Center and in the Tuscany and Eagle’s Nest Clubhouses.