Personal history and ancestry are explored in Oceanside Museum of Art’s Janet Taylor Pickett: Light, Color, and Desire curated by Dr. Jennifer Baahng, on display from Saturday, May 27 through Sunday, September 3.

Exploring Blackness, Identity, and History through Luminous Artwork

Janet Taylor Pickett is a mixed media artist whose work is inspired by her life experience as an African American woman. Her breathtaking work explores Blackness, identity, and history through exuberant colors and multi-textured experimentation. The artwork features vivid images, as well as mythical symbols and historical art references.

Janet’s work is showcased in the form of luminous portraits of singular female subjects (often herself) gazing out, enveloped in vibrant colors and iconic figures including birds, flowers, and botanica. These figures are incarnations of an ongoing desire for social, sexual, and spiritual freedom. This exhibition tells a story that has been influenced by the artist’s visual conversations with three of her primary creative interlocutors: Johannes Vermeer, Henri Matisse, and Frida Kahlo.

OMA Welcomes Janet Taylor Pickett: Light, Color, and Desire Exhibition

Janet Taylor Pickett: Light, Color, and Desire positions Janet as an artist concerned with color, specifically the hues and the way they inter-animate each other. Her artwork features a saturated color palette similar to that of a kaleidoscope. Rather than shading, she uses contrasting and unmodulated colors to create volume and structure.

Janet’s artwork is an expression of a life being led in the pursuit of psychical, spiritual, and aesthetic liberation. The story that her work tells serves as a reminder of the imbrication of life in natural cycles of death and renewal, and the tender and tenuous relationship between light, color, and desire.

Curator Dr. Jennifer Baahng is the leading scholar on Janet Taylor Pickett’s work and represents the artist in New York. Established in 2003 and located on Madison Avenue, Jennifer Baahng Gallery specializes in Post-War and Contemporary Art and presents intellectually rigorous and visually revelatory exhibitions that are both historically resonant and forward thinking.

See you there

Experience Janet Taylor Pickett’s captivating exhibition at Oceanside Museum of Art, where vibrant colors and symbolic imagery intertwine, telling a mesmerizing story of personal history, identity, and the pursuit of freedom.

For more info, visit OMA’s website here and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

See you there, San Diego!