Janice La Motta is a visual artist with an over forty-year career as a studio artist and as an arts administrator. She has balanced a career as a practicing artist while serving in the positions of museum curator, artistic director, nonprofit executive director and as owner and director of a contemporary fine arts gallery that she ran successfully for eighteen years. Since 2020, she has been pursuing her studio practice full time. In October of 2023 she returned to her love of gallery work and opened Art Bites Gallery, in High Falls, NY with her partner, artist Simon Draper. She lives and maintains a studio in High Falls, NY.

Her work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at 1053 Gallery in Fleischmanns, NY in May 2024.




Statement

My recent work grew out of some simple shifts in my studio practice. I stopped using oil paint in favor of using house paint, which I found equally effective in my work. In fact, I became a bit obsessed with the particular palette of blues that I was working with. At the same time, I indulged a latent interest in food packaging boxes. The unfolded shapes became the starting point for the collages. Working with simple materials seemed to allow greater freedom in the work.

I also returned to a smaller scale. Being in this intimate space allows for a particular attention to detail that I find completely engaging. This work is as much about the compelling desire to find the right arrangement of color and form that is both satisfying and surprising, as it is about the simple pleasure of working with humble materials.

My work reflects my engagement with the world. The sensations of my experiences, filtered through memory, make their way into the work in sometimes obvious and sometimes unconscious ways. I work spontaneously and viscerally with each mark informed by memory, association, and the physical act of constructing the piece. What makes a work of interest to me is arriving at the right balance of intention, uncertainty and surprise.

In November 2020 I decided to create a newsletter as a way of remaining in contact with the community of friends that I'd developed during my initial years in Woodstock and the long time friends and colleagues from my forty years in Connecticut. As I mentioned in the first issue, the idea was simple: to create a newsletter of musing and things that had been sustaining me through the pandemic with the hope that they might offer the same sustenance for others.

The links below will take you to back issues. If you would like to be added to my mailing list please email me through this site. Thanks!

Red Sneakers no. 10
Red Sneakers no. 8
Red Sneakers no. 7
Red Sneakers no. 6
Red Sneakers no. 5
Red Sneakers no. 4
Red Sneakers no. 3
Red Sneakers no. 2
Red Sneakers no. 1