Today on the Artalogue, one of my favourite Canadian painters, Janna Watson, chats with me about her art career, being Queer and taking inspiration from nature. Janna Watson is a Toronto-based abstract painter whose paintings use colour, drag marks, contrast, and negative space to reframe spirituality as something embodied, flexible, and alive. She also intentionally avoids borders, letting the edges stay vulnerable and infinite.

We start with her earliest memories of art, shaped by two artist grandparents and a formative critique from her grandfather: “it needs to be wilder.” From there, Watson breaks down how intuition is built through repetition and risk, why “mistakes” often become the strongest moments in a painting, and how she sees herself in collaboration with her tools. We also talk about influences she returns to, what she chooses to collect at home, and how nature, especially the sky, becomes her favourite form of inspiration in abstraction because it changes constantly and belongs to all of us.

Because this conversation lands during Pride month, Watson shares her experience as a Queer artist raised in a Pentecostal church, including the being outed, and how finding queer community in Toronto expanded her sense of self, God, and possibility. She explains what it means to “queer the painting process” through working on the floor, building compositions with multiple orientations. We close with career highlights, discuss sobriety, her new book “Layers of Self,” and practical advice for emerging painters who want a sustainable studio practice. We also have a really great discussion about complicating the Canadian canon!

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Madison Beale, Host

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