About Janis

Born: Baltimore, MD
January 30,1944

Lives: Berlin, MD; Ft. Myers, FL

Maryland native, Janis Ilene Grau, has been working in watercolor for about fifteen years; as well as teaching middle school art for the last thirty-five years. In 1966 she earned a BFA degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She has pursued course work at Towson University and various workshops earning credits in education and art equivalent to a Master’s plus 30. Janis lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and maintains a home in Ft. Myers, Florida as well. She finds numerous subjects for her watercolors from the natural settings in both of these coastal areas.

She paints flowers, primarily, but also loves still life and landscape subject matter. Her love for the medium of watercolor grew from an early age when her high school art teacher, Jim Laubheimer, would require a weekly watercolor as homework. “He would send the class to paint “en pleine air” regardless of the weather. I can remember one winter day trying to paint the Baltimore skyline from Federal Hill, when the air was so cold that our washes turned to ice on the paper.” From this early discipline in the medium grew her expertise in technique, a keen sense of color and a desire to capture the fleetingness of nature in some permanent way.

She is a member of the Art League of Ocean City, MD, The Art Institute and Gallery in Salisbury, MD and the National Association of Professional Women. Her work has been displayed at various venues on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and may be seen by appointment at her studio in Berlin, Maryland.

Collections:
Mr. & Mrs. Rodger Groff
Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Isett
Mrs. Vilma Armandt
Mrs. Toni Cropper
Mr. & Mrs. William Wienhold

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her…I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. …Claude Monet