Janet I. Traub

Janet I. Traub is a Canadian painter whose work is devoted to figurative realism. Her commitment to the human figure began early and has never wavered. Accepted into the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Alberta as one of only thirty students chosen from hundreds of applicants, she found herself at odds with the abstract expressionism the program demanded. She learned, in her words, to throw paint. But she already knew where she was bound. The figure, the hardest subject a painter can attempt, would be her life's pursuit, because once the human form is mastered, every other 
subject comes more easily.
Traub trained in oil painting, drawing, and watercolour, with studies in painting and visual 
communication design at the University of Alberta. She later deepened her craft in the ateliers of Europe, studying portraiture at the Florence Academy of Art in Florence and the Academy of Realist Art in Edinburgh, where the traditions of classical painting are kept alive.
Her paintings have been selected and shortlisted for exhibitions internationally, including three works shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and finalist recognition in the ModPortrait competition in Barcelona and Madrid. In 2026 she presented her first solo exhibition, Senza Fine, in the Winter Garden of the Helvetia & Bristol in Florence. Closer to home, the National Gallery of Canada holds her work as a cultural asset to be archived and maintained.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I paint the human figure because it is the most difficult subject a painter can attempt. Master it, and everything else becomes simpler. That conviction has guided me since I was young, and it has never left me.
Every painting begins with a vision. Before I touch the canvas I must see the finished work, and within that vision lives the emotion, the reason the painting must exist at all. From there the discipline takes over. The drawing must be flawless. The hierarchy of light must be flawless. And as the work proceeds, the vision returns to the foreground, because the final details are the most critical of all. They are what capture the original feeling. When I place the last of them, I have come full circle, and my vision and the finished painting are one.
I want the viewer to feel something. If a painting does that, it has done its work.
My craft extends to the materials themselves, each element researched and chosen for permanence: 
oil on linen, sized with rabbit-skin glue, a titanium ground, Maimeri Puro oils, and a finish of Maimeri retouch varnish. Kept from wide swings in humidity, a painting made this way can endure for centuries.

EXHIBITION HISTORY
2026 Senza Fine, Solo Exhibition, Winter Garden of the Helvetia & Bristol, Florence, Italy
2026 ModPortrait Finalist, Real Círculo Artístico de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2026 ModPortrait Finalist, Auditorium of Arroyomolinos, Madrid, Spain
2026 Harmony of Vision, Hsinchu Art Museum, Taiwan
2026 Harmony of Vision, Illuminati Fine Art Gallery, Hong Kong
2026 Galería Artelibre, Zaragoza, Spain
2025 Atlantic Gallery, New York, USA
2025 More Than Realism, XIX Edition, Galería Artelibre, Zaragoza, Spain
2025 City Museum of Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
2025 Women in Art, Artio Gallery, London, UK
2024 First Street Gallery, New York, USA
2024 European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), Barcelona, Spain
2021 Portraits of Resilience, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
2020 Gallery Representation, Suppan Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
2017 Archived, Library and Archives, National Gallery of Canada
2014–18 BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (three works shortlisted)