The blue picture

I seem never to have posted this and, oh dear, it is not such a good photo, but let us say it is a kind of sculptor's study without the sculpture.. I did a number of them at the time.. I went autour de la statue with the pencil and sketched the models and then they became this painting (60 x 50 oil on canvas) which has running down through the middle a kind of sentiment that may express the couple.. in greek, but my translation of the poet Seferis's original would be : "Just a little longer, we will see the almond trees blossom, the marble gleam in the sun, the sea breaking into waves... just a little longer.. we will rise a little higher..
a bientot
Jane

Pen dancing into figure

One of my favorite one minute poses with Koula from my time in Nicosia. It is about 30 cms square on lovely smooth Sennelier paper. 2003. Tomorrow a new model - Claire - I know, its another female, but I am determined to redress the balance very soon.

a bientot

Jane

Nude study;

Here's a nude study I made yesterday with a male model for a change. (50 x 70 mixed media on paper). I am afraid he thought the pose was torture, poor chap. (45 mins) I think it shows that I have been largely been drawing females as I feel I feminised him a bit, (maybe the pretty sheet doesn't help) and it has inspired a worry that I am losing my grip on the male anatomy. Oh dear, possibly an unfortunate way of putting it but you know what I mean. Really must do something about this. Could willing male models please form an orderly queue? Usual hourly rates apply.
a bientot
Jane

Pen, ink, figure, water, brush

An abstract ink painting no more than 15 cms square which is pretty obviously derived from a group of figures.. I rarely make these dreamy abstractions but when I do they are genuine abstracts in that they start off as a 'real' image, usually of figures, and then are abstracted out and away and often back again.. to restate the figures after a process of transformation... or you could forget all that and just look at it. Its merely a sensual little dream in a sensual medium. This particular ink leaps ecstatically on contact with water and becomes all sorts of colours.. you have to chase it to bring it where you want it and accidental elements are always present to work with and against.
a bientot
Jane

Christina drawing Brigitta

A drawing I made on Friday (7/09/07, 50 x 70 charcoal on paper) when over-enthusiasm at the gym earlier meant my shoulder would not permit working at the easel. I sat so I did not have to raise my arm but as a result had no "recule". I liked working in that position though. Maybe the front foot is too small and God knows where the right arm is - guess I could not see it - but it was an hour of good absorption. Sorry about the photo - one day I will get my husband to teach me about white balances.
a bientot
Jane

Khosia spreadeagled

Very large brown paper from the Limassol factory again .. a drawing from the same sort of time as the previous post when I was trying to make something very big in an hour. (Chalk on brown paper, 100 x 130, 2006) Maybe i am a closet scene painter. ... It is unmistakeably Khosia, facially a very good likeness, and that is me in a mirror in the background, obviously contemplating something other than the model's foreground arm to which I really ought to have been devoting more time.
a bientot
Jane

The day size mattered

Our life room has a rhythm of working towards a longish (one hour) pose at the end of the session. I wondered how far I could get with a stick of charcoal in an hour if I worked big - well this is brown paper stuck onto a huge canvas, (130 x 150 cms, charcoal and chalk, 2006) which is great cardio-vascular excercise if you are going to cover it in an hour .. you need a rather statuesque model for this kind of thing.  And you need to make a zillion, trillion decisions in that time.. unfortunately they won't all be the right ones, but it is certainly a challenge. In my limited experience (about 750 hours) I have never seen anyone work this big in the life room - Go on.. spend paper .. would you really rather have a tree than this? Yes, so would I, but this was cast offs from a factory in Limassol so at least my drawing was a better idea than chucking it on the tip. Call it a stay of execution....
a bientot
Jane

Figure in movement

A quick nude study on brown paper.. (about 80 x 50 cms. Charcoal. 2006.) One of my favorites from my July installation of life studies although not everyone agrees with me. I will be sad to take this one down and return it to its portfolio. At least it gets a little outing on the world wide web...

a bientot

Jane

Imaginary Portrait

A conjuring trick.. an imaginary portrait of a friend of mine. (chalk on paper 40 x 30, 2005 ) which I made completely from memory one day. Although I have never seen him sit quite like this he has this kind of feline suppleness and a way of living loosely inside his clothes and always, to me, comes with a red background. I have never caught sight of him asleep either. As I say, it is made up. If he sat in front of me I could never achieve a likeness like this. A mystery.

a bientot

Jane

Pambos and Koula

Pambos and Koula posed under what looks like one of those typical cypriot woven ceilings as light flooded through the shutters. (Oil pastel on paper 40 x 30 approx. 2006) The original sketch did not contain the distortions that emphasise the feeling in this pastel drawing. Light has became a sort of silvery liquid, the flesh is pulled and exaggerated in all kinds of ways, the man's hands seem disproportionately large as if to fit them for the purpose of seizing and grasping the woman's ample flesh. The cat, the symbol of lust and desire, seems almost transparent. When the painting's new owners come to re-frame it they will discover the cat who is almost concealed by the frame in which it left me, probably because i was nervous about the off-balanced compositon and wanted to centre it more on the figures. A strange work and a rather soft photograph this time, sorry!

a bientot

Jane

Couple

Well it is just a pastel coloured embrace.. a sketch .. a glimpse.. the woman is the focus. Maybe she is imagining the man. I put it here because I just want to show it before the purchaser takes it away. A moment in reality or dream.
a bientot
Jane

Alter Ego

A work very highly textured by my standards...(50 x 40 mixed media on canvas, 2004) in fact it began as an exercise in Nicholas Panayi's life room following one of his trips to the DIY shop in search of those guns extruding plaster and polifilla etc for the purposes of experimenting with texture and glazes. Rembrandt would probably have killed for one of those... As for me, as the accompanying sketches all reveal, I made a work where Pambos's somewhat anguished pose is seen reflected in a slanting mirror behind him. It was highly coloured at one point and then I attacked it with what i used to call the Turkish White Glaze of Death, (because some of my Cypriot colleagues had a tendency to paint secrets and then veil them. )

I feel so proud that Alter-ego has joined the wonderful art collection of the Maltese Ambassador to The Hague.

a bientot

Jane