signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Former collection of James Allan (Jim) Coutts C.M. (1938-2013), Nanton, AB. Jim Coutts was a friend of Janet Mitchell’s and acquired this painting directly from the artist. The work was subsequently purchased by a friend (private collection, Toronto ON).
While now recognized as an important Alberta artist, Janet Mitchell spent the early part of her fifty-year art career relatively unknown to collectors, balancing a full-time job with her art practice to support herself and her family. She was fifty years old when she was finally able to dedicate herself fully to her art and, by 1970, when well into her sixties, Mitchell finally hit the height of her artistic career. The next 15 years, 1970-1985, would be her most prolific: “It was more of a releasing of myself,” she noted of this period, “The paintings took on a newfound freedom.”
Janet Mitchell has become known for works that blend fantastical elements with reality – where the unconscious and the absurd fantasies of the mind mingle with the outside world and everyday life. During the 1970s, Mitchell developed a series of skillfully constructed acrylic paintings in which she contrasts colourful elements with white, negative space. “City Street”, painted in 1974, is an example from this period. Here, abstracted swaths of colour juxtaposed against white, transform into a dynamic scene, where figures, milling about the foreground, appear more clearly as the eye moves through the work; the abstracted buildings anchor the background – colourful silhouettes against the sky with geometric smoke flowing from their chimneys. As Peggy Armstrong notes in her biography of Mitchell, her technique “accentuates the blend of the internal with the external through shapes and colours that are interlocked with white. The effect is powerful and striking.”
Reference: “Janet Mitchell: Life and Art” (Peggy Armstrong; Hyperion Press Limited; Winnipeg; 1990)
