Janice Mallison

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Biography

I was born in the UK, brought up in Canada and moved to Europe when I was teenager, attending high school in Germany then university in Scotland followed by work in Edinburgh and southeast England. I now live in Vancouver where the backdrop of the sea and the mountains forms an area of unparalleled natural beauty, but I am continually drawn back to Europe a couple of times a year to savour the museums, the exhibitions, the music and the café life.

I studied pharmacology and toxicology at undergraduate level at the University of Aberdeen followed by a master’s in clinical Trials at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of London. Much of my working life has been spent in a scientific environment in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. I have been lucky to have found a profession which perfectly suited my skills set and to work with amazing and knowledgeable people.

Although I cherished my work, I was consistently drawn to art during my travels, frequently visiting local museums. I often returned to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery in Ottawa while exploring renowned galleries across Europe. My passion for art led me to study art history through online courses with the National Gallery and the Art Institute in London. I further deepened my practice by attending painting workshops in Italy and France, alongside regular drawing classes, both locally and online. Now, I am fully devoted to my artistic pursuits. 

Statement

I feel like I have been chasing beauty in the world around me all my life and feeling frustrated that I cannot express how I feel about it through art. I grew up with the idea that artists were born, and it was only later in life that I came to realize that anyone can learn to paint or draw. Whether you can become an impactful artist is another question. My current objective is to gain a firm technical foundation from which to move ever forward with self expression. I read somewhere that Picasso said that once you have mastered perspective then you are allowed to forget about it. I want to master the skill set of realism in painting and then move on from it since it is not my preferred genre. That is somewhere between Impressionism and Abstraction. As of now I love the pictorial and do not want to paint in a completely abstract way. That may change in the future. There are many beautiful abstract paintings that I admire but am not drawn to in the same way. My favourite painters include Fra Angelico for his purity of colour and spirituality, Velasquez for how he plays with portraiture, Vermeer for his tender representation of women, Turner for light and drama and Monet for his love of nature