Janette Cervin
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Janette Cervin attended Unitec Institute of Technology, graduating in 2010 with a Bachelor of Visual Communication before embarking on a Masters of Design (majoring in Painting), which she completed in 2013.
Cervin's family background in the floral business and a lifelong fascination with both the craft of floral painting and the use ofthe flower in art and cultural rituals have lead to her investigation of the flower as both compositional device and subject matter in her work.
Cervin's work can be read on multiple levels. As an adoption of 16th century Vanitas themes in a 21st century discourse, Cervin'suse of the floral as a motif stands as an emblem of the transience of life and the ephemeral nature of objects in a society driven bya perpetual cycle of production and consumption. Through the use of the floral motif as
compositional device and repetitive subject matter in a fine artcontext, Cervin suggests the inherently feminine nature of the floral subject, thereby questioning the conferral of gender roles to subject matter and by extension, the gender lines drawn between'craft' and 'fine art'. Finally, Cervin's use of the floral motif as a 'garland' around a softly rendered landscape suggeststhe promotion of an ideal that goes hand-in-hand with a romantic sense of 'place' - in Cervin's case the collectively-held notion ofa 'pure' NZ as a sub-tropical paradise untouched by civilisation.
Cervin was a finalist in the 2012 and 2013 Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Awards, a finalist in the 2011 and 2012 Waitakere Art Awards (winning the 'Still Life' category of the 2011 competition) and a finalist in the 2012 and 2013 Waikato Art Awards (taking out thePeople's Choice award both years running). She continues to exhibit and produce work from her Warkworth studio.