Janet Mitchell

alt=Colourful watercolour painting depicting a crowd of people celebrating in the street. People of the Street #24, from the Alberta Art Foundation Collection. Janet Mitchell LL.D (November 24, 1912February 26, 1998) was a Canadian modernist painter from Alberta, known for her fantasies of Calgary in watercolours and oils.

Early life and career Mitchell was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in 1912. Orphaned at a young age, she was adopted by John and Janet Mitchell and raised in Calgary. At age 9, her adoptive mother Janet died, and she was subsequently mistreated by her adoptive father's second wife, Rose. She left home at age 14, and in addition to continuing her education at Crescent Heights High School, she worked as a chambermaid to pay for her room and board. Her first solo show was held in Toronto in 1949. She was mainly self-taught but in 1959, she studied at a summer workshop with artist Gordon Smith, and the following year, attended the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops in Saskatchewan. In 1962, at age 50, she made the decision to leave her government job and become a full-time artist. Numerous one-person exhibitions followed, mostly in Alberta, at the Allied Arts Centre in Calgary, Alberta (1963), and in Toronto, and many other galleries across Canada.

In 1965, the Save the Children Fund chose one of her paintings for their annual Christmas cards, making her the first Western Canadian artist to be so honoured. She was influenced by Paul Klee and Marc Chagall whose work she saw on a trip in 1950 to New York.

On February 26, 1998, she died of cancer. She was 85 years old.

Legacy In the years following her death, her paintings continued to attract interest. In 2007 her piece They Roam the Streets at Will sold for $9,950 at Hodgins Art Auctions.

Awards and honours In 1977, the Glenbow Museum mounted a retrospective exhibition of her artistic career. In 1979, Mitchell was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Her papers are in the Glenbow Museum, Janet Mitchell fonds.