Janice Kovar

Janice Kovar is a visual artist from Dundas, Ontario who attended McMaster University 1982-86 and graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Art, majoring in sculpture and drawing. She received a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University in 1991 and has taught visual arts with the HWDSB for 30 years, recently retiring in 2021.

She has been exhibiting her work since 1986 in many group and solo exhibitions in the Hamilton/Toronto area and has participated in several collectives like the Contemporaries, Afterimage: Abstraction and On the Edge Environmental Artists. A few recent show highlights include Earl’s Court Gallery, Carnegie Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, and the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair (2023, 2021).

Her work speaks to the notion of transformation and juxtaposition of materials. She is interested in showing surfaces, passages of time, edges, textures, and mark-making. A variety of materials are implemented including acrylic, plaster, found objects, wood, paper, and organic materials.

Through a process of removal, contrast of materials, re-purposing and reconstruction, her sculptural forms and paintings speak to the notion of the environment and our relationship to it. She is drawn to textural surfaces that are found in nature. Her intention is to communicate a feeling or an an emotion that engages the viewer through tensions on the surfaces, fragmentations, and fractures allowing her to reconstruct nature in a geometric way with an emphasis on light, wind, and shifts in time.