Chestnut Ride, 11x14

About Janet Broussard

Janet is a native Texan and an accomplished landscape and still life painter living in Austin, Texas.  Working in oil, she strives to capture the vitality of the moment, with “lost and found” edges and loose brush strokes.

Janet’s artistic talent came to fruition at an early age, winning her first award in fourth grade, for a watercolor seascape of California’s Bug Sur.  Constantly painting and drawing, with frequent milestones of recognition for her artistic talent, she followed her chosen path to the University of North Texas where she majored in Advertising Art. 

 While working in a gallery and commuting to school from Dallas, she became immersed in papermaking, sparked by the tactile challenge of working with her hands.  Over the next sixteen years, Janet enjoyed success with her abstract collages, each one using a variety of materials including cotton fiber and found objects.  Corporate and private patrons alike enjoy her work in Florida, Colorado, Texas, and Mexico.

 Always emotionally inspired by nature, Janet admired the beautiful light captured by the California Impressionists, especially Edgar Payne and George Wendt; she also admired the fluid strokes and spontaneity of the painter Joaquin Sorolla. Maynard Dixon’s southwestern landscapes appealed to her graphic sense with saturated colors and simple shapes that conveyed vast skies and distant buttes. The paintings by these masters moved Janet to change mediums and genres.  Leaving behind handmade paper and contemporary abstract ideas, she embraced representational concepts and began painting with oils.

 After moving to Austin, she enthusiastically pursued landscape painting, and studied with such notable painters as Matt Smith, Scott Christensen, Skip Whitcomb, John Budicin, and Don Ward. She paints small field studies outdoors to capture the essence of the scene, and then later uses these with photographs and observations to create larger works in her studio.