After Titian

Nicholas Panayi (see links) e-mailed me a pencil sketch by Titian which propelled me to make this painting (oil pastels on paper, 17 x 12 cms, 2006) . I could have used one of my own sketches but no - I nicked this one of Titian's. It spoke to me. I do steal odd things from other artists from time to time without acknowledgement or apology because i know full well such theft is actually impossible. It goes without saying that Sig. Tiziano Vecelli has nothing to fear from me. All my work comes out inevitably and automatically in my own "handwriting". This is why I can never understand the obsession with originality and the cries of "painting is dead - there is nothing new left to discover..". In fact there is plenty old left to discover .. how much have we forgotten? I just believe every creative spirit is unique and therefore entirely original. I guess borrowings from others are the way we carry our traditions from generation to generation. I need to feel connected to that process. So here I present a small, simple painting of my own, inspired by Titian.

a bientot

Jane

A talisman

"C’était un jour béni
Nous étions sur les plages
Va-t-en de bon matin
Pieds nus et sans chapeau
Et vite comme va la langue d’un crapaud
L’amour frappait au coeur
Les fous commes les sages.."

Guillaume Apollinaire

This is the text written down the right hand side of the painting.. often words in a painting are not really meant to be read - more of a texture or mark-making element. This painting (50 x 60 cms, mixed media on canvas 2005) belongs to a series where I wanted to release certain images from the entrapment of my sketchbooks and let them out on to the walls. The text is a sort of talisman; i write it in the front of every sketchbook before I begin. It is not really describing a happy beach scene of course but is making a sarcastic snipe at the WW1 soldier's life. It reminds me to seek depth. Everything must always have more than one meaning. The painting was used on the cover of Richard Douglas Pennant's poetry volume "Old Stones New Tales. "

A special day

A little square but round nude. Acrylics, about 30cms square. Henriette. July 6th 06. A most striking model with an ample figure and dyed black back-combed hair piled high on her head... very good to work with. She is the Sunflower Lady of quite a few posts back and for me this is a great likeness of her. She is coming back on Friday so we will see what I can make a year later..

a bientot

Jane

Me and the model in minutes

Sometimes there is only five minutes to capture a pose ... before you put a mark down you have to look for as long as you dare and choose.. you have a large piece of grey paper and a lot of chalk pastel colours and the elements to juggle are the model in the space, her reflection and your own reflection. Since I do not want just to draw the thing in front of me I have to create a relationship - the artist and model again .. I think, in the end, the most deepened, substantial part of the work is the self portrait, the model is almost transparent, as if I stare straight through her and her reflected head to my puzzled, concentrating face... And it seems the red cascade of drapes, flowers and the model's wrap caught my first sweeping eye over the scene.. (A2, pastel on paper, 2007)
a bientot
Jane

Spirits together so strong

Another postcard-sized watercolour dream which probably started out as a scribbly ink drawing and then painted its way in a rather abstract direction, losing interest in anatomy along the way and preferring quiet emotion and atmosphere. To me it has a feeling of erotic exhaustion about it. I'll be exhibiting it, (with the owner's permission) and a few other similar works, in my open studio next month.
a bientot
Jane

Embrace

For a change, a nervy little watercolour with much ambiguity. Postcard size; ink and watercolour on paper. There I go again: the emotions are all up against the edge. Just an impression of an embrace. Maybe more what an embrace feels like than what it looks like.. melting, falling and losing..

a bientot

Jane

Transitional Objects

When I came to the Netherlands from Cyprus the tension seemed to disappear from my compositions with couples and for a while I was confused, and, worse, begining to lose interest in them. But I liked this one. It seemed rather a transitional work (Ja****ne, 2006 oil on canvas , 24 x30 cms, rather a soft photo , sorry) and partly because of the dog. Discovering the museums of Den Haag, Haarlem and Amsterdam I amused myself noting how many of the old master paintings have a small dog in the foreground. A symbol, of course of fidelity, in the widest sense, which sometimes has to be tested by separation. The candles can mean so many things and maybe here are about the uncertainty of something so easily extinguished. The man is looking towards the candles as if to will them to keep burning. The woman is carried off in a dream. In that sense it remains a part of my Together-alone concept (See postings below.) yet seems, maybe because of the pretty colours, to contain a hint of something positive: humour or optimism.
a bientot
Jane

Untitled

Well, what about this image... it is not a great photo of it but this is the little one on the wall in front of me as I write this blog. (Untitled, 2005, oil pastel approx 25 x 25 cms.) I am clinging on to it until Cherry Denman (her site under construction, sorry) carries out her threat to come asking for it. This morning I was chatting with Sarah from Muddy Red Shoes (see links) about the latest Jeff Koons images she had just seen that provoked Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells-type feelings. Oh dear, I said, the red painting I will be posting today is one of the more erotic ones.. Suffice it to say, she sent me the Koons link and I ceased to fear to post. Take my advice and don't go there... meanwhile my credo is that there's always room for erotic art that is first of all using artistic criteria, does not set out to shock gratuitously and has that feminine accent on pleasure, passion and joy, as well as the sadder more negative kind of aspects you find in, say, Tracey Emin. Approached that way it is actually a very underexplored subject, which is strange, given that it reflects such an important aspect of life. Meanwhile, if you prefer pornography, you don't need to spend millions on a Jeff Koons when you can go to your newsagent and buy something pretty similar from the top shelf for a few euros. I know what I prefer.....


a bientot


Jane

A sad one...

I think this is so sad - but really that is all I know about it. I remember the models holding a rather relaxed and cheerful position but then I took it off in a different direction. I guess I was often thinking how people look so happy, romantic and intimate, but in fact the truth can be sadder or at best more complicated. This couple seem in a kind of impasse; but there is enough closeness to suggest they want a resolution.... Cyprus again. I could never get away from that.

a bientot
Jane

Where do you end and I begin?

This is from the Together-alone series (see blog entries below)(30 x 40 cms oil pastel on paper) The shutters, the couple, the tension, the red colours - all still there. But a more dreamy and dissolved effect. This comes partly from a gesture of flake white oil paint that went on at the end as a kind of emotional layer. And partly it comes from a freer interpretation of the two figures - I tried to make them melt into one thing. In art as in life...!....

a bientot

Jane

Worlds apart

I miss this painting a lot - but the painter who bought it did me an honour. For me it was the most true to the concept of this "Together-alone" series. A couple physically intimate but mentally on different planets.. with the emotional stuff quite subtle and bang up against the edge again. Why do I do that??? And a hint of shutters. Back then I was lucky to have models prepared to adopt these kinds of poses. I am trying to get the owner of a similar painting in this composition to send me a photo of it.. "you didn't photograph it?", you ask. "You might as well not have made it!" - You are right!... now I would never do that..



a bientot

Jane

Leaving

I made many of these Together-alone paintings just before leaving Cyprus.... with this one, again, the emotional pivot of the painting seems to be leaving by the extreme left edge of frame.. (click to view it enlarged) and those iconic shutters remain to occupy the centre - my idee fixe. I often worked in the studio of a wonderful artist called Nicholas Panayi (see links) which was full of these louvered shutters. Don't ask me why, but I guess it must sort of work, because it was purchased by a painter I revere... Then again... maybe it doesn't, because, when I first had it framed, the framer just didn't get it and covered up the woman's face completely...
a bientot
Jane

Together Alone no 2

Well.... this is another of the Cyprus "Together-alone" series.. it is mostly watercolour so it differs from the rest which are oil pastels. But it is the same size - about 3o x 40cms - and definitely the same subject. A couple in tension. As so often with these paintings - (tomorrow you will see another one like that) - the emotional content is kind of disappearing off the edge of the frame - you may not even perceive the head of the male figure disappearing out of the rhs of the frame. It has in some ways the slightly exploding character of the sunflower nude of a few posts ago - I wish i could bottle the technique - I have no precise idea how I made it except it all came together in the last 30 seconds or so.

a bientot

Jane

Together-alone

When I was in Cyprus everybody said it must be wonderful for a painter: blue skies, minarets, palm trees, sunlight glinting on the sea. Well it was, but not in that way. The sunny, warm climate did lift my spirits when I was not falling asleep in my studio because I had forgotten to switch on the air-conditioning. But I paint the human figure and human relationships in interior locations. What entered my work in Cyprus was really the tension between the two communities. In 2004 the crossing points opened and cypriot Greeks and Turks could meet again. There have been many joyful reunions but there is still tension. My human couples in the "red series" "Together-alone" are together in their bodies but apart in their heads. This is the first one (oil pastels, 33 x 46 cms, I think, from 2005) which came out of an unforgettable model session that gave rise to many works. Those characteristic cypriot shutters occur throughout the series ...
a bientot
Jane

Pear + Pair

Once I brought a pear back to Cyprus from my home in France after the Summer and gave it to my friend. It was a beautiful perfect thing. He made many dreamy oil paintings based on this pear and had a very successful exhibition. I made something more superficial: a little series of prints based on a rather wry Ogden Nash-style poem I wrote called "Pair + Pear" which compared the experience of the lifecycle of the PEAR with the lifecycle of the PAIR. All good things come to an end. It was just for fun, really.



a bientot

Jane

Summer Show Exhibits

This is the first painting I showed on this blog (Self portrait of the artist with Model; 2006, oil on canvas, 100 x 130) but it has now dropped off the end and you would have to delve into the old posts to find what I wrote about it. I just want to say that I am exhibiting it at the British Club of the Hague on Thursday afternoon along with another three paintings from this "yellow series" so if you are reading this in the Netherlands, and would like to see it in the real, do come along to the second floor of the De Witte club at 17.30. Alberto Valentini, Sally Levell, Mieke van Zundert and other colleagues are also showing paintings in this "summer Show".

A bientot
Jane

Letting (reality) Go

This is another artist and model fantasy from the same series as the previous painting. As with all this series it is based on 2.50 euros-worth of model time - about 15 minutes - and some hours of further thought and action to transport it onwards from the reality of the model session.

It develops into an erotic dream that owes a certain amount as always to Asik Mene, also in some ways to Tracey Emin, to Picasso's Vollard Suite and to some of Schiele's artist and model works in its investigation of the artist's motives and desires - be they carnal, artistic or something else.... but I have yet to find another who is tackling this subject head-on. I will continue to deepen it because the eroticism of my past work in Cyprus is just beginning to synthesise with the more recent artist-model works in an encouraging way. I wonder what is going on....

a bientot
Jane

Image, music, text...

Artist and Model. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 cms.

"In every heart there is a room, A sanctuary safe and strong

To heal the wounds from lovers past, Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones..You answered me with no pretence

And still I feel I said too much My silence is my self defense

And every time I've held a rose It seems I only felt the thorns

And so it goes, and so it goes. And so will you, soon, I suppose

But if my silence made you leave... then that would be my worst mistake

So I will share this room with you and you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed. It's just as well for all I've seen

And so it goes, and so it goes..and you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you. That's if the choice were mine to make

But you can make decisions too. And you can have this heart to break.

And so it goes, and so it goes And you're the only one who knows....

a bientot

Jane

Sunflower lady

More sunflower yellow .. another small canvas. In fact, the model, Henriette this time, almost becomes a sunflower with her angular bent elbows and knees and the head thrown back to receive the full heat of the sun. Actually it was not the sun but the furnace like heat of the studio which this time last year was as hot as it is now. And the model lay bathed in its full flooding light that bleaches out everything.

a bientot
Jane

Artist and Model

Here you have another small yellow-series painting from about a year ago, 20 x 30 in acrylics on canvas with some wisps of flake white oil paint and lots of pencil marks. It is maybe the first time I painted this model - and I seem to remember that she really liked this one... I will be finally exhibiting all these paintings next month - friday 13th! Must be mad....

a bientot

Jane

Learning a strong pigment...

This little painting of Tishke is oil on canvas about 20 X 30 cms and is one of the first of my so-called "yellow series", started last year . Since I left Cyprus in 2005 I have gone all Van Gogh sunflower yellow. In Nicosia I used dark reds and flesh and neutral colours mainly.... You can only understand what you do in retrospect. It seems clear to me now I was trying to import - as an antidote to all that Benelux grey - the bright Mediterranean colours I was missing. When I was there I did not want to reflect them. Nor the minarets, palm trees and bouganvillia. Now I am here the windmills, canals, cows and rain-soaked cobbles are absent... as are the soft dissolving pinky greys and the slate colours of the North Sea. Place seems to register in my work as something to deny or escape. Anyway, the sketch of Tishke was a good way to escape. I am lurking reflected in the background....

a bientot
Jane

A favorite model

This is a very free, very quickly executed, large sketch (approx A2, chalk on paper) of one of my favorite models. Haven't seen her since the session that produced this short pose - and I miss her. She is one of those models who really performs despite being motionless. Being an artist herself, she understands the importance of the model's participation in the process. Unless you project something - a mood, atmosphere, a feeling unique to that moment of that day - the artist's receptors won't be met. She knows that.

Jane