Paintings by Frank Janca
Editor’s note: Images reprinted with permission from Frank Janca.
Frank Janca
Southern Inspiration
October 30, 2008 - January 11, 2009
Southern Inspiration, an exhibit by artist Frank Janca will run through Sunday, January 11, 2009. This is the first exhibition by Janca in Mississippi since 1997. Included are still-lifes, Mediterranean fishing scenes, landscapes, and market scenes. Frank Janca is a modern day master in the truest sense. Early on his work deviated from his contemporaries. He adopted 18th and 19th centuries’ techniques such as grinding his pigments by hand and cooking his own oil mediums. His use of light and shadow is similar to the works of Velazquez and other Baroque masters.
Born in Maryland in 1953, Janca grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, where be began painting professionally at the age of 14. At 23, he left the Gulf Coast to study at the Art Students League in New York City. There he studied anatomy, perspective, and figure drawing under the guidance of Robert Beverly Hale and David Leffel. He spent countless hours copying Old Masters works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and became so involved in the great painters’ lives he began to learn how to make his own paints. Janca decided the next step for him would be to travel to Europe to paint. He found much inspiration in the light and landscape of Southern France, especially the area of Alba in the province of Ardeche, where Van Gogh and Cezanne had painted. Janca travels to Southern France each summer, where he paints on location and teaches workshops at Moulin de Perrot Academy.
Frank Janca’s paintings have been exhibited in the U.S., as well as France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Japan. Janca’s still lifes, portraits and landscapes are part of numerous public and private collections worldwide.
He now splits his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Provence, France.
