janet leombruni

Artist Statement

Janet Leombruni is a Connecticut-based painter, known for her figurative work,
described as expressive realism. Her work portrays the everyday life of family, friends, and students, using tropes of fables, literature, nursery rhymes or myths. It is framed as a
narrative figurative painting that often puts viewers into tense, morally complicated, or emotionally 'raw' situations
rather than neatly resolved stories. This points to a social-realist impulse: painting as witnessing, without turning people into symbols, and using realism for
empathy and discomfort rather than prettiness. Vivid colors, motion in textures, and design
dominate her work. "The strongest oak tree of the forest is not the one that is protected from
the storm and hidden from the sun. It's the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to
struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun."-
Napoleon Hill Leombruni asks the viewer to
wonder: what is going on here?