News

Aug 26, 2023

The Art of Making Art: Janet Latshaw Simons

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Janet Latshaw Simons creates authentic acrylic paintings on gallery wrap canvas.

Wow, what a mouthful – let's break that down.

By "authentic," she means her artworks are not figments of her imagination but are scenes of real things she has observed. She attempts to match the colors accurately but takes artistic license to add or remove details to enhance the look and feel as part of the creative process.

Simons uses acrylic paints with strong bold color attributes. She uses gallery wrap canvas enabling her to paint the edges, which eliminates the need for a frame.

Simons creates one to four artworks each month. Each is part of a series. She has completed 26 series over the past six years. Each canvas is 1½ inches deep, and as large as 36 by 72 inches, but can be as small as 12 by 12 inches.

The studio is in her garage and is a functional space, except when it is so cold that her space heater cannot keep up. She creates on a large easel and has boxes for paints, brushes and water containers nearby. She orders her canvases online in bulk to lower her costs and washes her brushes after each use to get longer life from them.

Simons buys tubes of heavy body acrylics and stores any leftover mixed colors in reused "to-go" containers so the paint doesn't dry out and remains available for a later painting. She really enjoys finding and buying new colors, mixing unique colors, and has a great memory of her paint inventory.

She usually starts her artistic day around 9 to 10 a.m., turns on relaxing music and will paint for five hours – though when she is really engrossed in a piece she might start earlier and paint all day.

Trips often provide Simons art inspiration for a new series. Some trips are conceived to be inspirational, and others provide unexpected inspiration.

For example, on the way to St. Louis she saw a group of very compelling barns from the highway. She shot many photos from the car. When she returned to the studio, she enlarged and cropped the photos until she achieved the most appealing layout, and a new series had begun. With her inspiration now churning, Simons continued and made most of the elemental decisions relating to the sequence of the series, artwork sizes and paint colors.

Each painting is sketched freehand using just eye-hand coordination. "My ability to draw is the crux of the work. Line is important. All the colors are planned at the beginning as a color will be affected by the color placed next to it or nearby," explained Simons. Her colors are bold and often bright.

Once her sketched image is correct, and she has selected and, as needed, mixed her colors, she begins to paint. If she isn't happy midway, she sticks to her plan and forges ahead. In the end, she invariably winds up happy with the result. She then signs "Latshaw," adds a hanging wire, and records the year.

Before moving to Evanston, Simons felt she had lost her art. "But when I came here, I was amazed to find that artistic ability does not dissipate, and I got it back," she said. "Things excite me everywhere I go, but in Evanston and surrounding areas as well."

Simons would like to share her work and vision, and is happy to negotiate pricing if it is a stumbling block. Check out her work at her website, Evanston Made or Instagram.

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Jean Cunningham retired from the business world and is now enjoying the next phase, including writing about local artists to increase awareness of Evanston's amazing art community. More by Jean Cunningham