Janet Eager Krueger, grew up in San Antonio and attended Alamo Heights High School. She obtained her BFA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975, and her MFA in painting from UTSA in 1998. She was an Associate Professor of Art at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas until her retirement in 2008. Her work is in many private and several corporate collections, including the Laredo National Bank, Texas A&M International University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, USAA, USAA Life, Valero Energy and the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation.
She is married to rancher George Krueger, also of San Antonio and an Alamo Heights alum. She and George have lived on his family’s ranch near Encinal, Texas for thirty-four years. Their two adult children, Will and Kate, live in Austin.
I like to think of myself as an interpreter between two cultures: a representative of a remnant society that still exists within the larger urban clamor of the American scene. In the past, my work took a turn for the narrative and every thing I saw seemed to have a certain mythological resonance. At the time, I felt it was a way to take a new look at the old myth of Texas ranch life. More recently I find that I have eliminated the human narrative entirely, and that examining the beauty and the solitude of place are sufficient expressions of my presence.
Janet's work is notable for its rootedness - in both theme and palette - to South Texas: wild hogs, mesquite, cactus, ranchers and their old pickups populate her work, the indomitable light of this region transmuted into the surprising variety of colors it reveals.
But this work transcends local color. For Janet the creative process is one of assembling bits and pieces - of stories, sketches, old photographs, Greek mythology - into work greater than the sum of its parts. Surprising, occasionally unsettling, juxtapositions result, and the imagery of the Texas ranch resonates universally... reminding us that everyday life in South Texas, like everyday life everywhere, has depths, - narrative, cultural, spiritual - worth attending to, scrutinizing.
Formally, the paintings express these juxtapositions stylistically. Many of Janet's paintings appear realist, initially, but her interpretive uses of color, brush stroke and pencil line, and the textural relationship between foreground and background, all conspire to show us something deeper. Just as the everyday and the mythological intermingle in these works, so do classical perspective and expressionism.
Sean Chadwell
Professor of English
Author, Quit Claim
