Janet Jacobs is a San Francisco Bay Area artist and art teacher. She received a BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from the California College of the Arts and an MFA in Sculpture and Painting from Mills College.
She grew up in San Francisco after spending some of her childhood living in India and travelling to places like London, and Rome. She absorbed the sounds and textures, colors and movements of these foreign places, taking quiet internal notes and learning how to observe.
At Mills College Janet was one of two main teachers for the artist Jay DeFeo, and later on was Chair of the Art Department at the Urban School of San Francisco. She continues teaching private classes from her studio in San Anselmo, CA. She has offered a workshop and retreat, Draw Breath, which combines art making with healing. She has also created an intimate summer landscape painting retreat in Sweden called Landscape and Light Retreat.
Relationships with family, other artists, and the natural landscape play a central role in her creative process. She is inspired by annual trips to Sweden with her family. The delight of being out in the field, working directly from the landscape, feeds both her inner life and the studio work back home.
Janet and her 94-year-old Dad have met once a month for years to paint or draw, sitting in the front seats of her car at Fort Baker or in Golden Gate Park. These hours have been very dear to both of them.