"My work is an exercise in personal exploration … encouraging the viewer to respond emotionally to abstract shapes, conceptual colors, lines, and layers.” - Janice Sugg Having lived and painted for more than 25 years in Colorado, the oil paintings of Janice Sugg occupy a unique position in the genre of Western Landscape. Her concept of Horizon portrays a powerful sense of earth blending with sky. Using layers to build imagery, she interleaves textures, blending color and a subjective atmosphere, using unpredictable palettes. The spectrum of colors often challenges well-worn clichés. The resulting layers are successively wiped and refined revealing a composite of underlying design; the result of colorful swathes of braided paint unfolding and enfolding the values within her palette. Indeed, Sugg’s surprising use of color has become a distinctive attribute of her work. Her newer work pieces together the fragmentary, contrasting and blending modern urban life and landscape. When organizing the space in her compositions, horizontal banding and chromatic impressions built from the landscape often come into play. Soft blues, greens, golds, and whites inspire peaceful contemplation. The increased scale of these pieces and the use of metal as a painting surface is a journey into the canvas as a continuously changing field. Sugg continues to explore the urban landscape, experiencing and studying its symbolism. “My work is an exercise in personal exploration; a preparation for journeys related to inner mind. That is, a balance of empowerment and meditation, often without using recognizable symbols, encouraging the viewer to respond emotionally to abstract shapes, conceptual colors, line, and layers.”