Painting and the Imaginary Portrait

Janet Werner

Janet Werner’s work has, for more than a decade, focused on the invention of fictional characters based on found images from popular culture. Her paintings operate within and against the conventional genre of portraiture; they are composite images that retain aspects of the original sources while embodying notions of transformation, innocence, and loss. For Werner, the process of painting is a way to investigate the iconic power of the portrait; she invokes imagination, memory, and projection to invest anonymous figures with specific identities. Werner will discuss her paintings in the context of the exhibition Another Perfect Day.

June 15th, 2013 at 4-5pm