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Janet Bourgeau was born in 1941 in Sherbrooke, Québec, as Janet Mabeth Sangster. She was raised in Sherbrooke.

In 1958, she moved to Montreal, Québec, where she attended McGill University from 1958 to 1962, receiving a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education. She married Angus Bourgeau, with whom she had two children. They moved to Windsor, Ontario in 1970, where she did a fine art major from the University of Windsor from1972 to 1979. In 1979, they moved to North Bay, Ontario, where they currently reside. At Nipissing University in North Bay, she took Drawing in 1982 and Basic Design in 1983.

Janet served on the board of White Water Gallery in North Bay from 1985 to 1988 and she was the documentation photographer at the W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery in North Bay from 1994 to 2005.

Solo exhibitions of her work include: Retrospective, Manresa (2003, Spiritual Renewal Centre, Pickering, Ontario); Spirit of the North (1999, Art in Public Places, Capitol Centre, North Bay, Ontario), Inside/ Out (1998, Art in Public Places, Capitol Centre, North Bay), Connecting (1996, The Great Gecko Art Store, North Bay), Dance of the Spirit (1996, St. Joseph Motherhouse, North Bay), Mixing the Media (1996, Temiskaming Art Gallery, Haileybury, Ontario), Mixed Media (1994, Sudbury Theatre Centre, Sudbury, Ontario), Notations (1990, Timmins Museum and National Exhibition Centre, Timmins, Ontario), Response (1987, Timmins Museum and National Exhibition Centre) and Recent Works (1986, Sudbury Theatre Centre, Sudbury).

She received eleven grants from the Ontario Arts Council between 1981 and 2005.

Janet's works are in private, public and corporate collections, including Manresa Spiritual Renewal Centre (Pickering, Ontario), Shalom House of Prayer (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario), Elliot Lake Centre (Elliot Lake, Ontario), Bank of Montreal (North Bay), Earth Ex. Ltd. (North Bay), Creech & Co. Chartered Accountant (North Bay), Remax North Bay Realty Ltd.; Concordia Centre, Nipissing Children's Mental Health Services (North Bay), Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement Board (Toronto), N. O. R. P. Art Acquisitions, Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (Sudbury); Ministry of Government Services (North Bay); Ontario Lottery Association; Northeastern Ontario Regional Cancer Centre (Sudbury), Ramada Inn (North Bay), Government of Ontario, Government Building (Sudbury); Jeux Canada Games, 1981 (Thunder Bay, Ontario), City of North Bay; Ontario Northland Railway; Timmins Museum and National Exhibition Centre; City of Vancouver; and Temiskaming Art Gallery (Haileybury, Ontario).

(The biographical information featured here was written in consultation with the artist in 2006.)

Interview:

Janet Bourgeau was raised in Sherbrooke, Quebec. As long as she can remember Janet has been interested in art. As a young girl, she often amused herself by drawing and sketching.

Her first career was as a teacher but after moving to Windsor, Ontario with her husband and two children, Janet's passion for art motivated her to enroll in a Bachelor of Fine Arts course at the University of Windsor. In 1979, during her final year, Janet's husband was transferred to North Bay.

In North Bay Janet's talent blossomed as she discovered the supportive and gifted visual arts community. She explored various media, including oil, watercolour, pen and ink, acrylic, quilted landscapes and printmaking. Printmaking has become her favorite form of expression. She likes the idea of sculpting wood for woodblock prints. She enjoys the complex process of the methods of printmaking that involves working in layers and methodically completing and thinking through one aspect of the work before moving to the next step.

Janet credits Anne Meredith Barry's workshops on mixed media and printmaking, as well as her father, who was a commercial printer, as influencing her passion for printmaking. David Milne, David Blackwood and Patterson Ewen have also impacted her work.

Most of Janet's work focuses on landscapes and she stated that she strives to show "something ordinary in an extraordinary way". Often a feeling attracts her to a particular scene and she tries to sustain the original intent or purpose of the specific project during the creative process. The actual process is flexible and fluid. It is very evident, as Janet talks about her work, that she receives much joy throughout the artistic process: from the birth of the idea, through the creation of the work, to the final framing of the piece.

Living in North Bay, with its similar physical landscape to the Eastern Townships where she was raised, has inspired Janet's art. Janet now describes her work as becoming simpler and more vivid because of the use of exaggerated colours for landscapes. Various experiences, such as a visit to Ireland or a trip to Lake Superior, have stretched her imagination and influenced her art. Her goal for the future is to keep on doing what she is doing but to do it differently at different levels.

Janet is currently involved in preparation for an exhibition that is opening in April 2007 at the W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery, North Bay. The exhibition is called, "Journeys" and features woodcuts and monoprints. The artists are Janet Bourgeau, Maureen Stewart and Penny Bateman.

(By Kathy Eckler, based on an interview in 2006).

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Janet Bourgeau
2006

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Janet Bourgeau, Memories of Ireland, woodblock/ lino print
2007

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Janet Bourgeau, Flyer for workshop at W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery
2006