Janice Mueller began serious study of art at the Staedel Abend Schule, in Frankfurt am Main, in 1979. She continued her studies at the Wiesbadener Kunstschule in Wiesbaden, Germany from 1983 until 1985. Upon returning to the United States she completed her BFA at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, RI in 1989. After graduation she re-located to Corpus Christi, Texas, with her family. While there she exhibited extensively. In 1993 Janice moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1999 she completed her MFA and Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She was invited to remain and teach. In 2004 Janice received the North Carolina Arts Fellowship for an Artist’s Residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. She lives and paints in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Symbols that have been with us since before the advent of organized civilization: spirals, grids, triangles, captivate me. There is no way to know what these symbols meant thousands of years ago; the passage of time has left eons covering meaning.

The engineering and scientific feats of peoples thousands of years ago fill me with respect. 12,000 years ago the builders of a burial site in Newgrange, Ireland, were able to judge when the sun would light up a chamber for 12 minutes on the 21st of December, the winter solstice, celebrating the symbolic rebirth of nature. That wondrous event still happens every year.

For me the color symbolizes the years and centuries, indeed, millennia, hiding the original meaning of those symbols. I scratch and scrape through the layers of color exposing just small parts of whatever is beneath. I cannot understand it. I savor the mystery.

The works are heavily textured urging the viewer to reach out and touch the paintings. To establish physical contact makes the experience real.

As science and art move onward toward the future, looking back and honoring our beginnings utilizing the modest tools of my craft seems a good thing to do. Recent interest has taken me, and my art, beyond the confines of our gravitation pull. It seems appropriate. But I feel the technological pull of the 21st century and expect that the future will bring further developments as I move my traditional medium toward newer and untested media.