In a year marked by a pandemic, health restrictions, and lockdowns, Janet Pedersen endured an additional obstacle—a painful, crippling injury. The Park Slope-based artist persevered, finding an escape through the world of dance. She created Step By Step, an alluring series of work depicting nimble movements, at a time when she herself was immobile.
Pedersen broke her left ankle last November while hosting Thanksgiving dinner at home. “I stepped on it wrong, my ankle snapped and this foot was at a right angle to my leg,” she graphically recalled. After a visit to the emergency room and a two-and-a-half hour surgery, Pedersen was sent home with a surgical boot and a walker. “I was in a boot and was literally upstairs in one room for about three months…. I thought what can I do? I’m an artist, how can I bring some joy to my life?” Knowing that she had an upcoming solo exhibition at 440 Gallery, where she’s been a member for almost four years, she decided to focus on preparing for it. “I had to think of a way to engage all these things that could keep me entertained and hopeful and joyful,” she said. “It did force me to have something to get up for, aside from my family, and it gave me some joy.”
Primarily a plein air landscape painter, there was no chance of Pedersen getting outside to work as usual given the COVID lockdown and her limited mobility. Her fondness for figure drawing—which she teaches online—led her to focus on the human form instead of outdoor scenes. An avid dancer in her teens, Pedersen decided to “reach back to [her] young self where [she] really wanted to be a dancer.”
She found inspiration in magazine photos and online videos featuring dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Nederlands Dans Theater. She studied the videos, froze stills of specific poses—arched backs, soaring leaps—and recreated them on canvas. “They are posed in a way that I wasn’t. I was literally in a boot and in my pajamas.”
She incorporated her plein air practice into some of the scenes, transforming the studio and stage backdrops into outdoor spaces with trees and glimpses of blue sky. “A lot of this was almost like a dance,” Pedersen mused. “I’m the partner here. I want to join in,” she said of her desire to add her own touch to what she saw on the screen. “Dance is a lot of push me, pull me, lead and follow.”
Tango features a couple dancing cheek-to-cheek in an intimate scene emphasized by the tightly cropped canvas. “It’s not the classic tango…but it was just an intimate moment and I thought 'I want to freeze-frame that,'” Pedersen notes. West Side Story centers on a figure jumping high over the heads of onlookers, “catching a breath,” according to the artist.
A dancer is lifted high into the air amid a thicket of trees in Bird Dance. She proudly holds her head high and extends her arms and legs behind her as if in flight. A pale figure extends an elongated arm upward while leaning toward a dance partner that Pedersen has transformed into a tree in the expressionist Tree Dance. Pedersen’s hazy images of lithe dancers are captivating. Her dreamlike acrylic paintings vibrantly celebrate “a beautiful art form” and capture the grace and spirit of the dancers.
Born and raised in a small town near Pasadena, California, Pedersen grew up in a creative family. “You can say I come from a family of artists. My grandfather was a plein air painter from Denmark,” she said. Her mother, a fiber artist, and her father, an architect, encouraged creativity in Pedersen and her two sisters. “We always painted together and drew on location,” she recalls. “We would be in restaurants and all of us would be drawing.”
Pedersen initially considered studying dance at UC Santa Cruz but majored in film instead. She later received her BFA in illustration from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. She moved to NYC in 1990 expecting to only spend a couple of years here working in editorial illustration. “I drove somebody’s car for them…from LA to New York,” she recalls, “with two portfolios and two suitcases, thinking I would be here for two years. But then I started to plant myself here. I met my husband, began friendships, and decided that Brooklyn was a pretty interesting place.”
She designed children’s books for several years which led to her illustrating dozens of titles. She later went on to write and illustrate four of her own children’s books. When she turned 50, she decided to focus on fine art. “I have done fine art in one form or another my whole life anyways,” she said of her decision to “become serious about showing [her] work and discovering who [she is] as a painter.” She took plein air workshops across the country “with oil paint and the easel” and was immediately smitten. “I was just blown away,” she says. “I thought this is what I want to do. This is what my grandfather did.”
“I didn’t get my MFA,” she continued. “I went to a number of workshops and picked up the tools of the trade and I brought them back. I remember buying a bike that I could fold up and I had my bicycle bags with my easel, my paints, and I just went one place after the other when I could…. Whenever I get a chance, I’m out with my easel and my paints.”
One of her favorite locales to paint is South Slope “because the light is more open,” she says. “I’m always seeking the light.” Other favorite spots include Windsor Terrace, Prospect Park, and Green-Wood Cemetery. “As an architect’s daughter,” Pederson also enjoys painting the built environment. “And any street corner that has a deli,” she adds. “[If] there’s a bit of color, some nice perspective, maybe a person standing there…if I can capture that in one-and-a-half to two hours, then I’ve had a good day.”
The industrial buildings and quirky side streets of Red Hook are also ideal locations for her. “It’s all the angles and the light, and I think Red Hook has a lot to offer that way,” she says. “If you can get the water in there, that’s great too, but it’s those side streets that I find really interesting.” Even after 30 years living in New York City, Pedersen notes, “I have many more scenes that I want to paint here.”
Pedersen dispels any romantic notions one may associate with plein air artists contentedly painting on a picturesque street corner all day. “It’s never easy finding a good spot because you have this preconception that ‘If I go down to Red Hook, I know exactly what I want to paint.’ You get your gear together, you go down there…. You go set up and somebody has either thrown up there or somebody’s parked right in front of what you wanted to paint.”
Undeterred, she will keep searching for a spot with the right lighting. “Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, you’re losing the light…. If the light is not working for you this way, you turn this way and you paint what is lit. Or you step across the street and look at it from a different angle. You have to stay on top of your game and try not to be defeated,” she insists. “If it were easy all the time, I probably would become bored with it.”
She enthusiastically muses about perfect light and hues in different seasons. “In spring, everything is just so young and green, and happening. It’s dizzy. In the fall, everything is just golden. The color is like apricot. There’s a color tone that [inspires] ‘Wow! If I could catch that....'”
During the cold winter months, Pedersen works from a studio at home, however this past winter was very different. “This last year, because of COVID, we were indoors all the time,” she notes. Despite the circumstances, she was able to stay motivated and productive.
“I think it’s important to keep working,” she says of her time healing during the lockdown. “We have pandemic. We have world events that have turned this country and the world on its side that I think we can’t turn our backs to, but we all have a responsibility to keep going and do what brings joy.”
Janet Pedersent: Step By Step
440 Gallery, 440 6th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view November 18 - January 3, 2021
Outdoor Opening Reception: Saturday, November 21, 3pm to 6pm
(Rain Date: Nov. 22)
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