Janet Vanderhoof is Pinnacle Artist of the Month
It wasn’t until a family crisis struck that Janet Vanderhoof
began to reexamine her priorities, abandon the play-it-safe
philosophy of her mother that had shaped her life, and allow
herself to explore a long-dormant desire to study art.
Janet Vanderhoof is Pinnacle Artist of the Month
It wasn’t until a family crisis struck that Janet Vanderhoof began to reexamine her priorities, abandon the play-it-safe philosophy of her mother that had shaped her life, and allow herself to explore a long-dormant desire to study art.
“After my youngest was born with Down’s Syndrome, my whole world changed overnight. I began to question how I wanted to connect to myself,” Vanderhoof said. “I had always wanted to do art, but I never saw the value in it. My mother’s advice was always, ‘get a job so you can take care of yourself.”’
A military brat born in Frankfurt, Germany, Vanderhoof lived in the Aleutian Islands and various places in the Lower Forty-eight before arriving in Morgan Hill in 1980.
Following her mother’s counsel, Vanderhoof earned a degree in speech pathology and audiology at San Jose State University, then worked 15 years in sales at a Morgan Hill lumber company. But the upheaval created by the birth of her youngest son started her thinking that perhaps she was missing something.
“Finally, at 38 I decided to follow my bliss, all the while thinking that I maybe I was too old for a career in art, that I might not be good enough. But I enrolled at Gavilan College and took every art course offered. One day a teacher took me aside and said, ‘you can do this,”’ said Vanderhoof.
Encouraged, Vanderhoof continued honing her skills with private classes – George DeGroat in Pacific Grove, Diane Wallace in Morgan Hill and Michael Lindstrom in Los Gatos – until 1993 when she decided she was ready to exhibit.
Since then, her oils have hung for sale in the Artists Forum Gallery in Pacific Grove, Gallery Morgan Hill and the Goose Pond Gallery, also in Morgan Hill. And, this month her landscapes and still lifes will grace The Pinnacle’s showcase windows in downtown Gilroy.
The exhibit will contain a number of scenes familiar to Morgan Hill residents, Llagas Road, Sabini Court, Santa Teresa Boulevard and Laguna Avenue.
While she has tried her hand at charcoal, pastels, watercolors and ink, Vanderhoof has concluded that oils are what she does best.
One of her early successes was a series of eight paintings inspired by the 232-day baseball strike in 1994-95. Nostalgia for days when baseball was more than a paycheck to players led to renderings of Leroy “Satchel” Paige on the mound, Lou Gherig’s farewell speech and Babe Ruth’s famous called shot.
“I sold three of them, but I couldn’t part with others because I’d become attached to them. You tend to sell the fleas, but not the dog,” Vanderhoof said.
As for style, Vanderhoof considers herself a colorist, an approach to painting that originated with Monet and was disseminated in the U.S. through Charles Hawthom and Henry Henche. Colorists create non-natural luminous hues that become more an emotional force than a traditional rendering of a scene.
“I’m more interested in how a painting feels than how it looks,” Vanderhoff said.
Vanderhoof likes to produce series of paintings – whether landscape, still life or people. She just finished a series of landscapes for a local businessman and has two other commissions pending.
“My next series is going to be cowboys at a roundup – again, eight or nine scenes. I took photos this spring and work from them in the studio,” Vanderhoof said.
As she often does, Vanderhoof is producing the cowboy series first as studies – a letter-sized version of a scene on Bristol board – that will serve as a model for a larger work.
“I get the feel for what I want to do. This is not an uncommon practice. Sometimes it’s easier to work out composition or color on a smaller scale,” Vanderhoof said.
Vanderhoof has exhibited widely and won numerous awards, including an Award of Excellence at the Local Essence Show in Gilroy.
But she apparently hasn’t arrived at a final destination. “I’m still exploring art – what I want to paint and why I want to paint,” Vanderhoof said.
Vanderhoof’s art is on display in The Pinnacle windows at 7451 Monterey Street, Gilroy.
