Adjudicator

Adjudicator Bio

Janet Read is a painter, musician, poet, and music educator, whose childhood was spent near Lake Simcoe. The artist has sought the water's edge ever since. Her roots go back to the Ottawa Valley Irish, Belfast, and county Wexford in Ireland: explaining a fondness for fiddle music, poetry, and the sea.

Residencies in Newfoundland and Ireland; and travels in the high Arctic, Norway, Iceland, and Scotland sparked a lifetime's investigation of water as metaphor for strength and fragility with special reference to the North Atlantic rim where climate change is accelerating at an unprecedented pace.

Read studied graduate philosophy and education at U of Toronto. Art studies at York and OCADU inform her practice of large scale paintings, book works, works on duralar and photo installation. Publishing credits include a poetry collection and recent work as a managing editor for the Ontario Society of Artists 150th anniversary book in 2022. Her MA thesis investigated the work of metaphor in visual art with reference to Paul Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty.

Exhibitions in commercial and public galleries, include the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, with a catalogue essay by David Aurandt, the Varley Gallery of Markham, Art Gallery of Peterborough, Art Gallery of Northumberland, and the Whitby Station Gallery. Hospital collections include the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie and the Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto. Paintings can be found in public and private collections and internationally in Australia, England and the US.