Janine Lees’ paintings explore the enduring relationship between art history and contemporary painting. Drawing on the visual language of the Old Masters alongside the work of later European painters, she revisits familiar subjects through a distinctly contemporary perspective.

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Her practice is informed by artists including Titian, Rubens, Pissarro, Monet and Klimt, whose differing approaches to light, colour, composition and the human experience continue to resonate within her work. Rather than simply referencing these traditions, Lees reinterprets them, examining how established visual narratives can be transformed through a contemporary sensibility.

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Her paintings exist within this space between past and present—where historical influence becomes a starting point for something new. Through the process of reimagining these subjects, Lees invites the viewer to look beyond their familiarity and consider how meaning, emotion and beauty can evolve through the language of paint.

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At the heart of her practice is an ongoing conversation with the history of painting: a dialogue between what has come before and what can still be discovered.