Before I forget

This is quite big - probably 120 x 100 cms - and was made in an hour with Henriette and the artist - me - looking rather thin in the reflection, painting. It belonged to the 2007 artist and model (yellow) series (posts passim) which was a time when I was working big in a very very very big space. I am still in the big space but tragically have stopped noticing the inspiring spaciousness. Technically this piece is nuts and that is probably why I never blogged it before. But I feel I must, for the sake of completeness and affection. And because I need to remember the reason I adored the space in the first place.

a bientot

Jane

Unsigned...

Ink?! - all I can say is when God created the squid it was with me in mind. You may use what emanates from a squid it to flavour your pasta if you like, but I would rather fill my pen with it.. or whatever derivative of it I am using. This embrace (ink on paper 15 x 24 cms approx 2005) has an intensity but it also has a few infelicities which I think I may be able to recitfy. So I just thought I would blog it now in case I ruin it in the process... and so that that the squid did not die in vain.
a bientot
Jane

Eric

Eric was pretending to cry. (charcoal pencil; A4, 1998) Usually he posed nude or in a turban and/or sarong. Sometimes he stuck pins in himself or adopted excruciatingly difficult poses to test himself. This made a tension that excited everyone in the studio. Being a buddhist monk he believed in mind over matter. At the same time he communicated how it felt to be him during these ten minutes and we all shared his total absorption which is transparent in this drawing. I wanted to blog an aquatint today but it was a disaster. Sometimes it is good to look back into the past in order to go forwards...

a bientot

Jane

Line line line

Thirty seconds contemplating a figure.. or maybe two.. aha!
a bientot
Jane

Blind monoprint

A very impulsive retrieval of something inside. (Untitled. approx 24x30 cms. monoprint 2006) How? A thin smearing of indigo oil paint on glass, a layer of paper and 30 seconds trusting my line with the wrong end of a paintbrush... Then my chinese seal.

a bientot

Jane

Drawing by the line

A graceful pose held by our model in Rotterdam on Wednesday. (Model Study. Sanguine on 110 grm cartridge paper. 2008) As you can see, she moved so much, especially her hands,

that I was obliged to make a second drawing from the same pose. Management of model fidgeting is part of the job, so I don't complain.

a bientot

Jane

Sketch for Ghosts of Love

Its not a great photo but it shows the first working-out of the composition I blogged over the last two days.. (Cavafy No 1. chalk pastel and pencil on canvas , 50 x 60cms 2005.) I know, I know... what kind of a technique is that! But I remember coming home late one night and grabbing the nearest materials and making this scribbly erotic thing in fifteen minutes which gave rise to so many other works. Enough of this nostalgia.. Tomorrow something very recent - made this week.

a bientot

Jane

Ghosts of Love (2)

Here is the sister work to yesterday's posting in which I did not play quite so fast and loose with techniques and although it is still mixed media most of it is oil paint. (60 x 70 cms mixed media 2005) I thought also to include the sketch made from life on which I based the couple in this painting. Forgive the bad photo with its "hotspot" - it was too difficult to remove it from the frame.

a bientot

Jane

One candle will be enough...

A poem of Cavafy reveals the poet in old age lighting a single candle, its soft light creating the "fitting" atmosphere to bring on the ghosts of his past love life. He sits in the candlelight and waits for them to come. In my painting (60 x 70 cms, mixed media 2005) there are several candles and their reflections because I got carried away with them as objects. The space has exterior-interior ambiguity but I feel it in fact to be an interior I knew well and the red coverlet and the table also making regular appearances in my compositions of that time. Tomorrow the sister work..

a bientot

Jane

One minute studies

A couple of linear nude studies (A4 pencil on paper) made in London in 2000 and finally exhibited and sold in Nicosia in 2005. If memory serves, these two are the same model and occasion. This was John Crossland's studio at the Hampstead Art School, where the model would "perform" a string of thirty one-minute poses just before the break. It was amazing - unique to that studio - and a pure flow that cleared your head of everything except drawing. I have never found anything to compare with it since.

a bientot

Jane

Solution

I made a number of works following a session with a young couple who posed for our group in Nicosia in 2005. I worked in clay as well and because I was thinking three-dimensionally the paintings all turned out to have a sculptural quality. One of them is the red/blue oil pastel from a few postings back. This embrace is a layered work (Solution 60 x 50 mixed media on canvas) with highly textured white acrylic overworked with glazes.

a bientot

Jane

After Maillol Again

Unusually for me, an abstract work, (Fourteen, A4, watercolour, 2005) based on the composition of Maillol that I stole and worked in lino print and oil pastel further back down the blog. In this work you would need extraordinary powers of recognition to discover the work that inspired it. It doesn't matter any more although I think the figures are legible. Using a rather perverse mixed media of watercolour and black printing ink it has metamorphosed into a rather ominous work about sex and death.

a bientot

Jane