Collection: Janet Treby Artist Biography and Art Gallery Collection

Janet Treby, is a British Contemporary Figurative Artist. She was born 1955 in London but grew up in Bedfordshire, England, a small village surrounded by wildlife. As a child she led a solitary existence, spending hours drawing and painting. She discovered she had an innate passion for nature and developed a love for the ethereal, eventually finding her way toward painting. By the time she was eleven, she knew she wanted to be an artist and nothing swayed her focus. Embarking on an artistic career, Janet Treby studied sculptures, ceramics, textiles and graphics at the Barnfield Art School. She then went on to earn a three-year degree in sculpture and printmaking at West Surrey College in 1977. In 1978, Janet Treby turned her attention to the business of printmaking, giving the artist another medium in which to express her ideas. She studied at the renowned Slade College of Art from 1978 until 1980, winning the prestigious titled of “Young Printmaker of the Year” from Lloyds Bank. Janet Treby later went on to teach printmaking at Farnham College and at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford.

Janet Treby found that her work in sculpture and the concentration on modeling the human form helped perfect her freehand immeasurably. Drawing inspiration out of everything from the human body to the metaphysical, the vast breadth and depth of her work has always been important to her. Whether of wildlife, the female form, or quite often both, the subject is always majestically spiritual and embellished with nature, giving a constantly transforming and narrative experience to the eye. What marks Treby’s work out from her peers is her perpetually driven curiosity which questions the juxtaposition and pictorial cohabiting, which ultimately and illustratively seeks to pit reality against fantasy; something of a recurrent theme in her hallmark work to date.

Janet Treby benefits from interests in science and spirituality which she places of equal importance to her art, and indeed elements which prosper and populate within her brand of art. This interconnectedness she strives to create, the emotional connection between all things, can be sensed in between the multiplicity of her technique. She has always been fascinated by the way the body moves and strives to create a mixture of reality and fantasy by manipulating the human form to be at once both playful and sensual. This is one of the overriding themes in Treby’s art; another is the liberation of the human spirit from its material constraints. Her style combines the traditional and the contemporary, her figures are shrouded, intertwining, ethereal, caressed in a sensual fusion of forms. 

Janet Treby specializes in mezzotint, etching, and serigraphy to illustrate the human form with grace and tenderness. Muted colors give her work a dreamlike, peaceful quality. She originates and lovingly creates sublimely gorgeous painted compositions hosting a dazzling array of creatures and animals which engender a sense of tranquillity and inner calm when gazing upon them. The atmospheric feeling found in her work, combined with her meticulous and highly developed drawing skills, have made her work a favorite among collectors internationally for many years. She has exhibited worldwide including London, Tokyo and Moscow.