b'about the people. A few steps back, she found a broader setting that encompasses the meadowpainting focus on the color of the emerging buds, the new green of the hanging branches and from gate to gate. Its the view she painted in Study #2, (see www.janetruttenberg.com). Thisgrass, the saturated blue of the sky. The budding tree line around the meadow is rendered in yel-long panorama includes the sculptures of the Literary Walk to the east and the receding Sheeplow and red ochre before any leaves appear. These are colors we dont see at all in her summertime Meadow fence on the West Side. More important, at this location, she discovered a landscape viewpaintings. She uses uffy pastel almost exclusively in spring to capture the rst leaves. She paints that she didnt at rst feel prepared to paint. Here, rather than faces and skin, she investigatesspring studies like Study #38 only through June, when they are rolled up and stored. July calls for a how gures t into pictorial space. She has been working toward this panoramic view ever since.new palette and a change in materials. Fluorescent acrylics take over as the sun increases in inten-She had some taller canvases stretched and began a painting called Lemonade is so Last Summer,sity. Over the summer, the path of the sun changes, and bright sunshine is refracted through the completed in 2013 (www.janetruttenberg.com). Another 9-by-15-foot canvas was begun andleafy stand of trees on the west side. Light and reection are perhaps her most enduring subjects. proved so challenging that it stayed against a wall, hidden from view, for years. A third enormousTo render intense sunlight, she has used both traditional and original media: mirrored glass, canvas called Spring, still in her studio, also depicts the meadow from this spot.gold and silver leaf, embedded LED screens, even neon through a slashed canvas. Outdoors, the watercolor and acrylic are applied sometimes using tiny brushes from a miniatureThe fact-nding that Janet does in the park is multimedia. She makes drawings, watercolors, Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor Field Box, and sometimes with extended brushesphotographs, and videos of every detail, and nothing escapes her eye. She adds photographs fashioned by attaching them to heavy rods or poles. Stage or Foley brushes didnt work. It is almostand video to paintings to underscore whats real. As she explains it, If I painted it, you wouldnt impossible to control brushes at this length. Janet uses them with a precision that requiresbelieve I saw it. She has a genuine, open-hearted interest in all of the people on the meadow, or, exceptional muscle tone and strength. Her control is such that she is able to dip into pan wa- as she says, Im a sucker for whats interesting in a face. She is every bit a voyeur, yet, because tercolors that measure about a half-inch squared. Working on the ground, she often has to standher demeanor is not in the least predatory, she gets to record the most intimate episodes of life on top of the paper. There is no way to step back to view her progress. Only when she has con- lived in the park. As temperatures increase and clothing peels away, she sees the human form in veyed the rolls of Fabriano back to the studio and unfurled them on a wall is she able to judge afar greater variety than life-drawing sessions could ever offer. Daily, contemporary variations on days work and determine what she will do next.Le djeuner sur lherbe, or picnic motif, simply appear. A cast of true New York characters are regulars and make repeat appearances in her work. She makes both quick, loose sketches Janet uses pastels from La Maison du Pastel, still hand rolled as they were when made by Henrialways on the same enormous scaleand heavily worked, full compositions that she transports Roch and used by Edgar Degas. The most vivid colors are rolled from pure pigment and binderto and from the Sheep Meadow, adding layer upon layer of paint. Unanticipated detailslike without additives. She likes their intense colors and has worked directly with La Maison du Pastelall the tattoos and the way a new glass tower reects every change in weatherbecome worthy to get custom shades. She uses two spectacular colors, Luminous Violet and Luminous Orange,subjects, fully examined and investigated to the endpoint, with every means of study. Only after in the Holbein Aqua Oil series, sparingly. The colors that predominate in her compositions aremany years did I learn that the imperative to examine and capture every vignette and surprise on versatile, sophisticated, and complex. Many come from tiny watercolor tubes made by Old Hollandthe Sheep Meadow is at odds with her ambition to paint the beauty, proportions, and rhythms or the Winsor & Newton Professional Field Box that she still uses. She tends to use pure color, butof nature in this setting. has mixed Old Holland Blue Violet and Ultramarine Violet as a base color for the buildings. She used vibrant, rich Winsor GreenBlue Shade, one of the nine colors in the eld box, extensively,Janets rst park subject was the skyline around it. In the 1980s, she had drawn and etched the juxtaposed with Old Holland Yellow Green or black, to take the color in either direction. Old HollandNew York City skyline from an ofce 40 oors up. To get an uninterrupted view of the buildings Cinnabar Green Light Extra straight from the tube ranges in color from green to yellow, dependingaround Central Park, she went to the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As early as 2005, on how its applied. Nothing but Golden Fluorescent Chartreuse acrylic captures the way theshe had a small composite of watercolors of the skyline from Fifth Avenue to the San Remo sunlit lawn punches through branches and around bodies. When thinned with water, the colorbuilding photographed, assembled, and printed on glossy photographic paper. In 2012, she changes completely from the warm hue of the thick acrylic in the tub to an electric cool lm thatreturned to the concept with new toolshigh-resolution digital photography and enormous creates optical tricks against the bright white paper. For fully opaque color outdoors, Janetprofessional inkjet printers. Using digital images of her detailed pencil drawings interspersed discovered Flashe, an unusual vinyl emulsion paint that solves a problem inherent to water-basedwith enlargements of shots she had taken in the park, she edited and assembled a composite media. Working on a wet or damp surface, its impossible to make a change or add a crisp high- digital image that could be printed at her typical Central Park scale of 15 feet. Although she light. Until the paint dries fully, there is no way to isolate a layer or color. (There are techniquesdoesnt use digital editing software herself, she is at the computer directing each step. She that watercolor artists use to mask and isolate color, but they are difcult to effectuate at thisincorporated proofs of the frieze into her outdoor work almost immediately. She took an early scale.) Vinyl emulsion paints are known for excellent lm-forming properties. The paint is not at allversion of the printed frieze to the park and found that it was perfectly suitable for painting, though affected by water unless its close to boiling. Both properties make it perfect for what Janet need- not as substantial as a paper manufactured specically for watercolor. The top portion of several ed. This kind of paint isnt widely used by artists. Out of several manufacturers, only Lefranc &Sheep Meadow studies from 2014 through 2017 started out as printed building friezes. Absorbed Bourgeois still makes vinyl emulsion paints for artists.by the potential of this technology, she started using inkjet prints of the Central Park skyline on paper and canvas in various ways, while continuing to improve the high-resolution, digital matrix Janet has a habit of working for many years on multiple canvases. The timetable is imposedfor years. The complete, digitally assembled building frieze took nal form in 2019 as a 16-foot-by the veracity she applies to the study and representation of nature. For years, she devoted thelong, inkjet print on 60-inch Sunset Hot Press Rag Finish in matte purple, green, yellow, red, and month of March exclusively to Bradford Callery pear trees and blossoms because thats when thecyan. The inkjet print is breathtaking on its own. Janet put it up on a wall in the studio to see how it trees ower. She nished painting the canvas that features the pear trees, General Sherman, inwould look as the top half of the Sheep Meadow view with several paintings of foreground details 2013, later adding more multimedia components to it. From April to June, she works at the Sheepshe had done in 2016 and 2017. The scale of the inkjet print matched each painted foreground Meadow, gathering information for the large canvas, Spring. These spring studies, and the oilsketch perfectly. She had composed study after study in the park on exactly the same scale. This 9495'