Janet Elizabeth Turner

Janet Elizabeth Turner was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 7, 1914, to James Ernest Turner and Hortense Adelaide Taylor. She was raised in Missouri and then attended Stanford University in California, graduating in 1936. Turner returned to Kansas City to study art at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1937-1940. She was a student of renowned American painter Thomas Hart Benton and went on to establish herself on both the national and international level as a painter and printmaker.

Turner continued her studies, attending Claremont Graduate School in California and earning an MFA in 1947. She later attended Columbia University Teachers College, receiving her Ph.D. in education in 1960. Janet Turner had an extensive education and became a prolific exhibitor and successful instructor. She taught in higher education in California, at Girls Collegiate School, Claremont, California (1942-1947) and in Texas at Stephen F. Austin State College, Nacogdoches, from 1947-1956. She also received a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 1952.

She returned to California in 1959, where she taught at California State University at Chico until her retirement in 1983. Turner won numerous awards and was named an 'Outstanding Professor' in California. She was also the founder of the college's printmaking program. Janet Turner collected thousands of prints during her career and donated her collection to California State University at Chico, forming the Janet Turner Print Museum. 

In addition to her work as an instructor, Janet Turner was very involved in artists' associations. She served as the vice president and president of the National Serigraph Society in the 1950s and early 1960s, was a member of the Texas Fine Arts Association, serving as a trustee for the association from 1947-1960, and was a member of the National Association of Women Artists for almost four decades, among many others.

Janet Turner’s subject matter included rural and small town settings as well as nature and wildlife. She exhibited prolifically, having hundreds of one-person shows throughout the United States and exhibiting in fifty countries around the world.  Prints by Turner have been in exhibits at major print annuals and biennials, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Society of American Graphic Artists, the National Academy of Design in New York and many international exhibitions. Her work is in the collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., as well as approximately eighty other college and museum collections. She died on June 27, 1988, in Chico, California.