Janet Duncan's exhibition 'What Were They Thinking' on display at UNE in Biddeford

The University of New England hosts an exhibition of oil paintings entitled "What Were They Thinking" by local artist Janet Duncan at UNE‚Äôs Biddeford Campus Center Sept. 9, 2010 - Oct. 5, 2010.

The inspiration for this series of oil paintings came from a three-folio set of photographs taken in Borneo in the 1920's by a medical doctor, Gregor Krause. His three folios show portraits of different monkeys and apes from the area, the forest lands, and a series of photographs of an orangutan and a proboscis monkey. Duncan particularly enjoyed painting the third series, and sought to capture the expressions of the orangutan and proboscis monkey. 

Duncan grew up in New Zealand, worked in Australia, and is now a full-time artist in Kennebunkport, Maine. Her world has always been about people and places. As a geographer, she has traveled extensively and has always enjoyed teaching her students about other people and places. It is not surprising that the same theme runs through her art.  She tries to capture the essence of a place through the built environment or the people within it.

Duncan is interested in shapes and colors and enjoys simplifying forms into flat, two-dimensional spaces that have interesting arrangements, whether they involve people or the man-made environment. Most of her work is in watercolor, although she sometimes uses oils and acrylics. She enjoys other mediums, but most of all she likes the velvety, flat, intense color she can achieve in watercolor.