In this exhibition Read explores a large Ontario lake in many moods in a mode of atmospheric abstraction. Oil and cold wax are layered and saturated colour inhabits form. Water is a metaphor for fragility and hope and has been Read's preoccupation for several years: narratives of space and light result.

Lake Simcoe | a book of hours, continues Janet Read’s investigation of the metaphoric nature of light over water. Residencies in Newfoundland and Ireland resulted in bodies of work titled, Ocean as Vessel, exhibited at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery with a catalogue and essays by David Aurandt, and Hem of the Sea, exhibited at the Aurora Cultural Centre. A recent winter spent on Lake Simcoe has focused her attention on one of the largest lakes on Ontario, the first body of water known to the artist growing up in Simcoe County. Atmospheric abstraction, a term coined by Carla Garnet, curator of Read’s solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, describes the artist’s practice of remembering land/lakescapes through the act of painting.. The artist quotes Howard Hodgkin, “in place of a beholder is a rememberer.” For Read, memory reveals a sense of lived, experienced place.