About the Artist

"Abstract painting is an intellectual process. To be a modern painter and to make a truthful statement is the sum total of all I am and what I am continually striving to create. I am a painter and my paintings are all I can contribute to this world."

- Janet Lippincott, 1980, Southwest Art magazine

Born in New York into a privileged family, Janet Lippincott went to museums with her Aunt Gertrude, a modern dancer. When she saw her first Picasso, Lippincott was hooked, and residing in Paris for a period as a child brought her in contact with the most contemporary movements. At age fifteen, she took a life-drawing class at the Art Students League, where she would later enroll full time.

During World War II, she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps and was attached to General Eisenhower’s staff. Later she liked to tell the story of how Patton stormed in demanding to see Ike and how she told him to take a seat and keep his mouth shut.

In 1949, she drove to Taos for instruction in Emil Bisttram’s School of Art on the G.I. Bill. In response to the transcendental painter’s dismissal of her talent, Lippincott told him that the G.I. Bill was paying him and that she would stay. If anything, his criticism only made her determined to prove him wrong, and she was vindicated when her one-time teacher wrote a glowing review of her exhibition at the Jamison Gallery in 1972.

After studying with Bisttram and Alfred Morang, Lippincott briefly studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. She took a job at the San Francisco Art Institute, and returned to New Mexico in 1954, establishing a house and studio in Santa Fe.

Many the artists in Santa Fe at the time were working in response to the Southwestern landscape, light, and culture, with no attention paid to Abstract Expressionism. After having started painting landscapes and portraits, Lippincott had experienced her conversion. "After the war, I came out here, and NO ONE was doing any modern painting. Here I came with my screwball ideas and shook everybody up."

She garnered several awards for her work in this period, including the 1956 Annual Circle Exhibition, Roswell Museum, Roswell, New Mexico; the 1957 Purchase Award, 10th Graphic Exhibition, NM Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM; and the 1958 12th Graphic Exhibition, New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Lippincott found a deep well working in various media. She continued to keep drawing as an underlying discipline, and she was a member of a drawing group in Santa Fe for about 25 years until about 1987. Lippincott was one of the first artists to create lithographs at the Tamarind Institute. In the 1970s, she dove into sculpture, shortly after the Shidoni Foundry opened in Tesuque.

She was very much a loner and was married once for 10 days. "That was 10 days too long," art dealer Karen Ruhlen recalls the artist saying. While she enjoyed the company of a man, she was always self-reliant and "a little on the ornery side," Ruhlen adds. "Janet was an artist to the core. Making art was like breathing - it was her way of talking and expressing emotions."

Lippincott received the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in New Mexico in 2002 and was honored in an exhibition by the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2003.

Upon her death in 2007, her estate, including documents, sketchbooks, and artworks, was donated to St. John's College in Santa Fe.

Her selected exhibtions include 1957, Los Artisanos, Las Vegas, New Mexico; 1957, Mexican-American Cultural Institute, Mexico City; 1958, Abstractions in Colored India Ink, La Galleria Escondida, Taos, NM; and 1959, Mid American Exhibition, Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, among others.

Her works are in the collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT; Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico; State Capital Art Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Harwood Foundation, Taos, New Mexico.


Download Full Biography