About Janis

Born: Baltimore, MD
January 30,1944

Lives: Ft. Myers, FL

Maryland native, Janis Ilene Grau, has been working in watercolor for about fifteen years; as well as teaching middle school art for the last thirty-five years. In 1966 she earned a BFA degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She has pursued course work at Towson University and various workshops earning credits in education and art equivalent to a Master’s plus 30. Janis has migrated from her home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and maintains permanent residence in Ft. Myers, Florida. She finds numerous subjects for her watercolors from the natural settings in both of these coastal areas.

She paints flowers, primarily, but also loves still life and landscape subject matter. Her love for the medium of watercolor grew from an early age when her high school art teacher, Jim Laubheimer, would require a weekly watercolor as homework. “He would send the class to paint “en pleine air” regardless of the weather. I can remember one winter day trying to paint the Baltimore skyline from Federal Hill, when the air was so cold that our washes turned to ice on the paper.” From this early discipline in the medium grew her expertise in technique, a keen sense of color and a desire to capture the fleetingness of nature in some permanent way.

She is a member of the Alliance for the Arts of Southwest Florida and the National Association of Professional Women. Her work has been displayed at various venues on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts in Tampa, Florida, at the Naples Fine Art & Craft Festival and online at the American Juried Art Salon. She has exhibited at juried shows at the Cape Coral Arts Studio and at Alliance for the Arts. Her work may be viewed by appointment at her studio in Ft. Myers, Florida.

Collections:
Mr. & Mrs. Rodger Groff, Greenville, NC
Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Isett, NC
Mrs. Vilma Armandt, Baltimore, Maryland
Mrs. Toni Cropper, Salisbury, Maryland
Mr. & Mrs. William Wienhold, Baltimore, Maryland
Mr. & Mrs. William Isett, Berlin, Maryland
Miss Emily Millage, Ft. Myers, Florida
Jane Malyon, art collector, Ontario, Toronto Canada

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her…I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. …Claude Monet