About Janice

Janice Colbert is an artist and poet. She went to school in Halifax, Key West (Florida) and Toronto before settling in Ottawa with her family. She received her first art prize (Little Golden Book - The Color Kittens) at Reynolds School in Key West for her Paper Mache rabbit. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and a BFA from the Ontario College of Art & Design University in Toronto.  Prior to OCAD she worked for many years as a fashion designer flowing from her education and training in design and textiles at St. Lawrence College. She produces abstract art that builds on her years working with textiles. 

Her work is held in Canada and the United States in private and corporate collections—including the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Janice paints on wood panels and heritage wood ironing boards from the 1920s. A recent exhibition of her ironing boards was Cut and Paste at Blue Spiral 1 Fine Art + Craft, Asheville, North Carolina, September 2-October 26, 2022

Several exhibitions were in Key West at the commercial gallery: Lucky Street Gallery (CAT 5, Cold Front, Temporal Convergence); Anne McKee Artists Fund, OIRF House Tour Poster and Custom House Museum: From a Woman's Hand. 

Her work was on tour for several years with the Blank Boy Canvas, a travelling North American public art exhibition that began in Toronto and has been shown in Mexico City, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Hong Kong.

She has exhibited at Aqua 12, 13 and 14 with AWOL Gallery Toronto during Art Miami Contemporary Art Fair, The Affordable Art Fair-New York, nuit blanche, Art Toronto (Canada's international fair for modern and contemporary art), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, The Power Plant, OCADU, The Artist Project Toronto, IIDEX/Neo Con Canada. In Victoria, British Columbia: Madrona Gallery.

Art awards include Royal Bank of Canada-Canadian Painting Competition, Ontario College of Art & Design University, Ontario Arts Council, shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition London, England, and poetry awards from the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award and the Marina Nemat Award from University of Toronto.