Janet Krueger

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Janet Eager Krueger (born ca. 1953) is an artist known for her large-scale oil paintings of south Texas ranching life. She is an associate professor of art at Texas A&M International University in Laredo and lives on a ranch in nearby Encinal in the southwestern corner of La Salle County just north of the Webb County line. In April 2007, Krueger was designated by the Texas Commission on the Arts as "Texas State Artist of the Year" for 2008.

Krueger's work is frequently sought by such corporations as Valero Energy and the San Antonio Spurs, a professional basketball team. Her work was shown in the Austin office of First Lady Laura Bush, when George W. Bush was governor of Texas. Art consultant Alice Carrington Foultz told the Laredo Morning Times that Krueger captures "the issue of the border area . . . in a sensistive way." One of her paintings depicts milk cartons discarded onto a field by illegal immigrants. Foultz said that Krueger "gives such a pure and honest portrayal of the South Texas landscape, and she honors livestock with such majesty and respect."

Krueger's mother, Betty, was herself a watercolors artist. Her paternal aunt, Grace Eager, was a zoological painter in the 1940s. Krueger graduated from Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. She then became the artist-in-residence for the College Station school district and then the slide curator ifor the architecture department at Texas A&M University in College Station.

In 1980, she moved to Encinal, population 650, after she married her high school classmate, George Krueger. The couple has two grown children, Will and Kate. For a time, Krueger devoted herself to ranch life and worked for a large-animal veterinarian in San Antonio.

Thereafter, Krueger became an art instructor at Laredo Community College. She then pursued her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio in the latter 1990s. She worked under the art professor and landscape artist Charles Field. In time, she joined the TAMIU faculty. She also established Hecho en Encinal, a youth arts program in Encinal.

Krueger began her art with oil paintings and worked from photographs of the ranch. Shen then moved to drawing and sketching with color pencils. Her work with color pencils is said to stand out from that of others in the same medium. Much of her work has been displayed at the Hunt Gallery in San Antonio.