Spring Blossoms Early
Details
Edition
Unique
Medium
Acrylic Paint, Gouache, and Oil Stick on Baltic Birch Wood Panels
Signature
Signed on Verso
Unframed Dimensions
49 x 40 in
124.46 x 101.6 cm
Year
2024
MORE FROM THIS ARTIST
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Toronto-based conceptual painter Janna Watson creates vibrant, gestural canvases that translate her journey from a dogmatic Pentecostal upbringing into a liberated vision of embodied spirituality. Through her bold abstraction, Watson reframes conventional faith into artworks where fluidity, agility and joy reign—eschewing borders, embracing the infinite and exposing the vulnerability of a spirituality unconfined by canon.
At the heart of her practice is the belief that process and product are equal partners: she paints on the floor, without preconceived direction, in a method that bypasses cognition and channels the spiritual. Watson likens this mode of working to the “speaking in tongues” she experienced in her early years—an ecstatic, unmediated flow now translated into mark-making and layered color.
Watson holds an Honors BFA in Drawing & Painting from Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCAD) and has exhibited internationally for nearly two decades. Her work is represented by leading galleries across Canada, the United States and Asia, and is held in prestigious collections including the financial institutions TD Bank Financial Group and CIBC, the luxury hotel group Ritz‑Carlton, as well as major corporate and hospitality collections such as Google, Air Canada, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom.
For DTR Modern Galleries, presenting Janna Watson offers a timely opportunity to engage collectors seeking contemporary abstraction that is both deeply personal and spiritually universal—anchored in the global market yet rooted in Toronto’s vibrant art scene.
