Janet Fish's fresh oil-on-canvas still lifes testify to her regard for formal nuance and her unwavering ability to direct the viewer's attention by the and of complex compositions.

Janet Fish's fresh oil-on-canvas still lifes testify to her regard for formal nuance and her unwavering ability to direct the viewer's attention by the and of complex compositions. Fish's orchestration of light and shadow not solely emphasizes the volumetric aspects of the aims portrayed but establishes season, time of day, a faculty of perception of occasion. She investigates extents of transparency in the light-conducting and reflecting glass and ceramic sailing crafts she selects and the liquids or particulars they contain, establishing a variety of compositional enigmas then resolving them.

Fish spreads a windowpane-pattern clergy across an unseen table in the 40-by-50-inch Feathers (2004) The horizontals and verticals of the pattern continue to an autumnal woodland just beyond a sill which obeys as a horizon in the middle distance. The verticals and neutral colors with which she transmits the desiccated, distant woods are repeated in the bars and chevrons of a bunch of flowers of wild turkey and pheasant feathers arranged in a patterned southwestern cup Scattered on the cloth are pinecones and seashells, a sand dollar, a starfish, a sea urchin. The urchin and a small cone stop on the open page of a spiral-bound notebook that in itself appears freighted as a memento mori. A warmer light that propels shadows on the notebook and nearby purposes derives from an unseen lamp, while the dispirited light elsewhere is a proceeds of the wintry day outside.

by conversion the light that brightens the 50-by-80-inch Rose Nectarines, Snow (2004) strike one as beings to find its source in the panorama of a winter afternoon outside, beyond the windowpane, illuminating a collection of aims arranged on a snowy white clergymen Fish has selected four principal percepts for their ability to gather and transmit light: a grave wide-mouthed cranberry glass vessel containing brace shells and a lacy fan of dried underwater flora; a glass containinq a few nectarines; a lustrous pressed-glass vase filled with pink and golden roses; and an abalone shell with its uneven exterior and pearlescent core. Each casts a shadow across the table.

Fish uses colored glass canals to similar advantage as she explores the interplay of light and shadow in succession the 7-foot breadth of Pinwheels/Cupcakes/Melon (2004) She whirls highlights in succession a luminous sewing bowl of Thiebaud-like cupcakes and several striped foil pinwheels. To the right, a wire caddy possesss a single striped glass and a bottle of orange soda, and just beyond is a Chinese checker game board. These and other drifts tilt toward viewer and picture plane, gathered together like familiars at a festive party.

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