Janis Provisor is a painter whose abstract imagery is based in the landscape and expresses an interior world. Since 1988, Provisor has collaborated with Master printer Bud Shark to produce monotypes, lithographs, and woodcuts. Often beginning the layering of her prints with a metallic-leaf ground, Provisor may combine other techniques, including lithography, woodcut, chine collé, monotype and fabric collage. Provisor uses images of natural elements as metaphors in her search for spirituality. She has a passion for and knowledge of Chinese painting that is evident in her layering of forms and her use of a blend of different spatial scales. The prints emerge from a chaos of markmaking and collage to present a sublime vision of beauty.
Provisor returned to Shark’s in August 2002 to produce a new multi-panel lithograph, Living on Laight”. The rich surfaces of these beautiful panels are built up from numerous layers of ink on paper prepared with squares of composition gold, silver and copper metal leaf and metallic gold powder. These surfaces combine with the printed layers to achieve a tactile organic quality and an actual physicality. Provisor’s prints are abstracted from nature, “…it always comes back to nature. Internal…external…lumps and bumps, cells and twigs, and everything in between…pattern and accident together in one space…a lot like life for me”. These prints were during Provisor’s move back to the US after several years in Hong Kong. She says, “…as I was making these pieces I was well aware that my life was in transition. This body of work is in part the expression of my imminent move from East to West.”
Janis Provisor has exhibited her work widely and is represented in the collections of The Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, The Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany, The Oakland Art Museum, The Richmond Art Museum, Virginia, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
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