City Paintings 1990 - 1994

Where magazine featured Spring & Thompson Street
(right) in its November 1994 issue and said

On view are recent works by Janet Sawyer, which
include the paintings of New York City for which
she is famed, plus landscapes of Montauk and Block
Island.

Janet Sawyer is know for her colorful childlike
images of New York City.  

The New York Times (WE) featured Prince & Thompson Street
(below) in a Review of the 1999 Krasdale show
"Making the Walls Sing" and said

Janet Sawyer's oil on linen titled Prince &Thompson
Street depicts an active downtown street corner
brimming with life.

Spring & Thompson Street oil on canvas 64x54" 1993

Looking Towards New Jersey, 1989, oil on canvas, 92x72"

In 1990 Janet Sawyer showed large paintings of lower Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood and views of the waterfront.  Lawrence Campbell reviewed the show for Art In America

"Usually one expects view paintings, whether of city or water, to be dominated by the horizontal.  Sawyer's are shaped instead like upright posters or windows of traditional proportions.   They all show what she can see form her windows looking south across the Hudson River or uptown at the buildings near Chambers street, closer, at buildings she can see across the street. . . .

Sawyer paints with dashing spontaneity and easy informality.  The viewer recognizes old acquaintances like the Statue of Liberty, the New Jersey Central Depot and, on the Manhattan side of the Hudson, the tow-away piers  with cars packed closely like dates in a box.  There are numerous beguiling details.  Red calligraphic Chinese writing on the side of a truck, the exact time on a clock on the New Jersey side of the river, a passing Circle Line Passenger boat . . . and street signs directing drivers away from her to someplace else."