Janet Culbertson, Future Tense

From the Collection Insights series, Islip Art Museum

Sunburst, 2010

September 15-November 14  opening reception: Sunday, September 26, 2:00-4:00pm

Janet Culbertson has been addressing issues of our diminishing planet since the 1970s. This exhibit, a selection of works from her "Industrial Park" series, examines the artist's response to global ecology, pollution, over-crowding and the obliteration of the landscape at the hands of our own species.

Throughout a career that spans over four decades, Culbertson has been focused on the landscape and here she employs a keen painter’s eye to convey the peril, the poison and sense of urgency now confronting planet earth. Her use of collage techniques in combination with dramatic perspectival views of the landscape provide her works with a depth of field that is theatrical and foreboding, seductive and mesmerizing. 

Carpool, 2002

Culbertson’s use of iridescent pigment is effective in communicating the toxicity of mankind’s greed and reckless contamination of the landscape. 

Art critic Rose Slivka said of the artist’s work, “A combination of the gorgeous and the gross, her mixture of methods and materials includes collage, pastel, metallic powders, silver and oil paint, glitter, sparkles, glass chips on paper, canvas or wood panels. The metallics suggest the phony, the precious, the attractive, the suspect.”