b'precision was accomplished outdoors, on lumpy grass, and on lengths of paper that measure ve times her reach. The nished building frieze, paired with an extraordinary foreground study of the people on the east side of the meadow, was displayed in 2019 with a video demonstrating the matching scale of eight foreground watercolor studies in the exhibit Janet Ruttenberg: Beholder, at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Janet connects Study #16, and several studies illustrated with it here, with an 8-by-15-foot canvas called Bees Dick. The oil painting, one of the original Central Park canvases still in her studio, was begun sometime before 2006 with the intention of painting a portrait of every person on Sheep Meadow. On a day when an enormous American ag appeared, complete with sitters for a group portrait, Janet was drawn in and made it the centerpiece of Study #16. It was executed in 2013, when she quickly added the group to a detailed study of the hanging branches and corresponding shadows that she had been taking to the park and revising that summer. Her next park study, Study#17(2014), began with a proof of the building skyline inkjet print as the top half of the composition. The scale of the buildings caused her to step back and take in the broader view, though limited by the length of the paper. At the center of Study#17 is an outdoor idyll. Her summary brushstrokes fully convey each gures relaxed attitude. Shadows from the hanging branches bounce over and around them. This superlative group portrait is what connects the study with Bees Dick. But theres more. Janet has been observing the east-west path of the sun over the course of each summer. At certain times, she is directly under the suns arc. In Study #17, she is at pains to capture the stark form of the shadows cast underfoot at noon. To render the glinting reections of sunlight on skin, she used gold leaf. Janet follows instructions that have come down to us from medieval manuscript illumination. She employs a traditional adhesive, or glair, and handles the yaway sheets of beaten gold with the type of squirrel-hair gilder-tip brush employed by craftsmen for centuries. These techniques originated to embellish sacred texts on parchment leaves, not paintings with a surface area of 120 feet. Janet is undaunted by this kind of painstaking craftsmanship and takes the time to apply each detail. Still working on studies that inform Bees Dick in 2015 and 2016, Study #21, and Study #23, Janet is engaged closely with life on the meadow. A squirrel takes center stage in Study #21. The same squirrel stars in countless videos and photographs. Like all Central Park squirrels, and to the endless delight of European tourists, its tame. This one gets into Janets bags for the peanuts she brings along. The top of the composition started out as an inkjet print of the building frieze. She added a print of a photograph of leaves to the top of the composition and explored this severe and contrasting spatial juxtaposition in several other pieces that year. Study #23 shows a meadow thats packed with people at the height of summer. Janet calls the painting Vernon after the guitar player who struck up a conversation with her. As a result, Janet learned all about his life and family, and his fully recognizable portrait found a place in a vast setting. In 2016, she began two new Central Park canvases. One, entitled Morello, is in the hot summertime palette. Working indoors, she covered an unstretched canvas in one go. She was very happy with the color and continued it by referring to several on-site watercolors to add details observed outdoorsa leaf study (Study #41) and a study labeled middle people (Study #43). Tracings of the overhanging branches from earlier outdoor studies have moved the painting further forward. During the months when she was absorbed with creating the skyline composite, Janet had two building photographs enlarged and printed on canvas as an experiment. The inkjet on canvas became the substrate of a new oil painting, this one done in the park. Over many weeks, she was able to get it done by taking unstretched canvas to and from the park and painting in sections or giornata.She assiduously monitored drying between trips. Like her watercolor studies, this OPPOSITEDetail of Study #17.96'