My Profile
I am from Africa and was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Our family moved to Rhodesia when I was ten years old and we left there in 1978 to return to Cape Town. My experiences in Africa had a profound effect on me as an artist and my colour pallette has always been influenced by the lovely earth colours and the really bright complimentary colours that I associate with Africa. My love of African wildlife and the beautiful wild open expansive bushveld have stayed with me, and I need to go back to painting wildlife from time to time.
My early career started straight out of school learning in the studio of Lintas Advertising in Salisbury, where I went on to spend 23 years as a Graphic Designer working in Ad Agency's. Towards the end of my Advertising career I learnt the techniques of Oil painting, Watercolours, Pastels and Charcoal Life Drawing from the well known Art teacher Ryno Swart, and that put me firmly on the path of becoming a Fine Artist.
I have spent the last 20 years painting in oils and taking part in many group exhibitions and displaying my work in Galleries. My first love is the challenge of portrait and figure work, but I love the colours of the simple still life, and I like to revisit wildlife and also love the amazing experience of abstract work.
I try to paint from life, where possible, as it's easier to get the essence of a person or the atmosphere of a place when confronted with the challenge of the reality.
My inspiration in earlier years came from my amazingly talented artistic father, Neil Pedersen and our great family friend Angus MacBride, who was a world renowned Illustrator, and of course my Art teacher Ryno Swart who spent many years reading to us from John Ruskin's books and teaching us the classic art of painting.
I have had paintings displayed in Galleries in The Lakes, G1Art, in Chester, Silver Star Gallery, in Wilmslow, Unicorn Gallery, and in Warrington, Picturesq, Northern Art and The Gallery at Bank Quay, and 'Artwork Studios and Gallery' in Northwich. I have taken part in exhibitions and sold paintings with 'NEWA National Wildlife Exhibition' on the Wirral. I took part in an exhibition with three other women called 'FOUR' in early 2017 at 'The Gallery at Bank Quay House' and am at present having a SOLO exhibition at 'Castle Park Arts Center' in Frodsham.
I am also involved in illustrating a series of 28 childrens books based on African animals. Four of these are in print, ABC's from the Wild's of Africa, ABC's Colouring Book, The Aardvarks Nose, and Bakuna's Babies.
They can be seen on this website:
I have lived in Cheshire, England with my family for the past ten years and have been inspired by the lovely birdlife here, and the local English wildlife which we regularly see, foxes, badgers, swans, ducks and geese. These have all inspired me, and many paintings of robins and magpies have emerged from my studio !!
www.instagram.com/janicelazzarich
Thank you for viewing my profile and hope you have enjoyed looking at my paintings