Janet Andre Block is ‘Catching Light’

What do Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s piano concertos and a quiet room have to do with Janet Andre Block’s work? They are among the many elements that shape how she paints, helping guide her into the layered, luminous worlds she creates on canvas.

Block makes layered oil paintings in rich, deep, misty colors. She developed her technique as an undergraduate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and then at New York University, and also time spent in Venice earning a master’s degree in studio art.

Block speaks warmly of her printmaking teacher, the well-known artist Kiki Smith.

“She was incredibly kind and generous,” Block said. “What I learned in art school is what I want to do.”

During the pandemic, she painted in a world of swirling colors that suggest another world just within this one.

Block’s work will be on display at “Catching Light, 75,” at David M. Hunt Library from May 23-June 19. The opening reception will be Saturday, May 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. and she will give an artist talk Thursday, June 4, at 5:30 p.m.

The exhibit features 75 small paintings representing her varied painting modes.

“I’m offering these as a gift to the library,” she said. “Each donor who gives $75 can choose a painting.”

The paintings are 2-inch squares.

Janet Block discusses painting.L. Tomaino

Block has worked with nonprofit groups in the Northwest Corner for many years. She has been a volunteer for Project SAGE, the Lakeville-based organization committed to ending relationship violence, for many years. She has also served on Trade Secrets Underwriting Committee — the annual garden event that serves as Project SAGE’s largest fundraiser — for 25 years and remembers the first meeting around her dining room table. She served on the board of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation from 1991 to 2000 and was chair of the Fund for the Northwest Corner.

She has stepped back from her work with nonprofits to devote more time to painting, though she still helps where she can.

“I enjoy the early starts of anything. That’s why I like art, where I can start with a blank palette.”

“There is something about picking colors,” she said, describing it as “really a kind of creation — just the pleasure of mixing up a color, finding the next purple,” along with the immediacy of “the feeling of the brush on canvas.”

Block commends Hunt Library’s Art Wall team: Garth Kobal and Sergei and Zoe Fedorjaczenko.

“I think so highly of them,” she said. “I can’t say no to Garth, who is such a sincere, talented and generous person.”

Block is guided by the thought, “You are what you focus on,” and says this, along with the natural world and music, helps her bring herself to “light and beauty” through painting.

For more information about Block and the exhibit, visit huntlibrary.org and janetandreblock.com