Tracey's technique, Gericault's idea

A small, quick, monoprint capturing a moment. Surprised in the act, maybe... I have just been in Venice looking at Tracey Emin and Tintoretto. As well as the sheer bravura and emotional power of the works there is something so exciting about seeing almost the whole output of an artist whose work is mainly in his home town of Venice and fixed in its various locations... as for Tracey Emin her UK pavillion at the Biennale was very moving. She included a large series of very "less-is-more" little monoprints in blue on pages torn from notebooks. Exactly the technique I am using in this picture from 2005 which is based on a scribble by Gericault who made some life sketches very like this, presumably in a brothel, unless he had some very adventurous models. As with the ink drawing I posted a few days ago the man is like a convict hiding from the tv cameras, wanting to repel the artist, maybe fearing identification - "remove that sketch book, this is private..."
a bientot
Jane

Tomorrow, that poisoner

Tomorrow, that poisoner, Jane Walker 2004. Oil on canvas 50 x 60 cms.

An airoplane is flying towards them,

Shut their eyes

Show instead how those insolent tulips

Unfurl new magic every time,

Keeping at bay

Tomorrow

That poisoner...

A composition that I interpreted several times but only this time with that poem. And only this time with Tulips whereas usually where you see tulips there have been candles. Tulips..... the Turkish symbol of perfect love... and a powerful image in Holland too - so another of my transitional objects? Flowers.... The quotation from the poem is mine and the reference to 9/11 disturbing but beyond my control. Survivor problems... All the grey paint is a layer of emotion laid down in seconds. I hope it comes over...

a bientot

Jane

Leave us this is private..

One of my ink drawings from about a year ago made very quickly from imagination but in oblique ways containing references to some erotic drawings I sketched from a book belonging to friends in India.. these were attributed to Gericault and thought to have been drawn from life. This composition is in a similar vein but is my own - apart from one borrowing from Gericault which is the gesture of the outstretched hand of the man, seeming to say to the artist "leave us, this is private.."

a bientot

Jane

Red Scarves..

This was the day that Henriette turned up in a red bandana to set off her extraordinary highly-piled hair. And, funnily enough, I was wearing one too,which you can see tumbling down over my shoulder as I am reflected in the act of forging the model on to my memory. (A couple of weeks ago: chalk on paper 40 x 50) . I exhibited and sold it at the weekend so its time to hang it in my virtual exhibition as well....

a bientot

Jane

Model and Frits

One of my earliest drawings from the Rijswijk studio, (58 x 74 cms chalk pastel on paper) a litttle over a year ago .. i was fascinated by all the paraphenalia on the table in the foreground which is nowadays usually occupied by Alberto's painting materials so i don't have it in my frame. Frits though, is always right there, in front of the table, making an oil portrait in the second half of the session., where I captured him in this drawing. I am not reflected this time - it is a third-party artist model relationship .. Frits looking intently at Henriette. It belongs to that time when I was first so captivated by the immensity of the studio space and way it is bathed in light.
a bientot
Jane

Djoa

Djoa: (68 x 83 cms. Chalk pastel on paper) This is one of the pastel drawings I exhibited in my open studio on Friday. Djoa falls into poses of such ecstatic abandonment. Alberto enhanced the sensuality by placing it in a pale pink passe-partout and quite a large frame. Felix, the purchaser, was really unsure about that but I really think it worked with the golden yellow in an audacious way. Sometimes these sketches of a few minutes can take on an almost monumental quality - it comes from having a very good model.

a bientot

Jane

Open Studio

My Open Studio was last night and this image comes from preparing the installation I made about the role of life studies in our work. We don't usually exhibit this kind of work but it has some value and I think occasionally we should - if we can find a good way to achieve it. Meanwhile I also exhibited about 55 framed paintings in my studio and along the corridors... it was great to have nearly 100 people come and share the work and enjoy an atmosphere that they created. Jan-Willems brought me a huge bunch of slightly tinged pale pink roses so they will be the subject of the next rose painting.. not that the human figure will be abandoned as the next two posts will show.

a bientot

Jane

A life study

Something I made in the last twelve minutes of a model session a couple of years ago - with a great model called Pambos - (see side panel photo) I guess it is about A2 size with charcoal and white chalk. For my Open Studio this weekend I am wallpapering a room with drawings like this .. it is a big room and a lot of work - but the drawings are not lacking - in fact I could probably manage several of these rooms before i run out of them - I think I would like to show how we artists have our scales and arpeggios and limbering up too - and need to keep in practise like musicians and gymnasts.

a bientot

Jane

I will miss you

The woman is clasping the man tightly as if for the last time. The sense of place is pretty much absent - not even my usual shutters - but the space is interesting. It is one of the first works I made when I came to the Netherlands and it will be in my exhibition next week along with its companions from the same "red/blue" series. (A4 oil pastels on paper 2007 ) Really I must think of a better series title before that!

a bientot

Jane

The spirits of love

A mediaeval quality to this one I think, but then, the red interior that I had in my mind is a shuttered room in an old city within a medallion of fifteenth century Venetian walls. It is a composition I keep returning to (30 x 40 oil on canvas 2006) and the greek writing built into the texture of the background is a Cavafy poem that tells how in old age one could light a candle to create an atmosphere for the spirits of love to arrive....bearing images from our past sensual experiences.......

I will exhibit it next week.

a bientot

Jane

My Roses

These flowers are still alive and I am still enjoying them. (40 x 30cms, oil on canvas). I told the friend who gave them to me that I longed to paint them. It is a total departure from my usual subject .. but yes, that is the point - it may indeed become a total departure from my usual subject. Since I have a whole exhibition to mount right now, and I just feel I want to run away, I have eloped with a subject that has a virginal quality for me - there is so much deflowering of these flowers for me to do. When I see a human figure I think I should know by now where to start ... but with roses I know I have everything to learn. There is one picture by Morandi and one picture by Asik Mene that I keep in my mind. Otherwise only the flowers themselves can teach me. From time to time you are going to find out what they imparted.
a bientot
Jane

Indolent creature

Such an indolent creature! Unlike in the previous post, this very quick study is pretty big - 100 x 130cms, I think - and in chalk on heavy brown paper. When I have my open studio in ten days time I am going to take the opportunity to show some of these studies that are just our scales and arpeggios but have value despite never ending up behind glass .. sometimes I feel the weight of those burgeoning portfolios and want to let them out as envoys from that region of our process...
a bientot
Jane

A minute to draw Koula

Sometimes you just have a one-minute pose, ruby ink and a dash of bleach....

a bientot
Jane

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

Just a pencil and paper

This is another view of the scene shown in the previous posting. It really is time that we re-arranged the model set.... I made it, maybe, three weeks ago, when I was feeling a bit tired and simply felt like "centering myself" with just a great model, a pencil and a large piece of paper. Lidia is a new model to us, a dancer, and we are all very delighted with her work. To give you a better idea here are also some of the "short poses" that she held earlier that morning, made in chalk on a similar 50 x 70 cms piece of somewhat scrumpled paper. I can sometimes be a bit unprofessional about materials! Tomorrow is model day again....

a bientot

Jane

Self Portrait with Katy

I love chalk... This is a pretty large (50 x 70 cms) pastel drawing I made a couple of weeks ago with a very slight model called Katy who, it seemed to me, was being somewhat overpowered by the whole, rather theatrical, set where she lay. I was sharing her with a small group of artists who meet every Friday in Rijswijk, a leafy but featureless suburb of The Hague, Netherlands, where the space, in an unused office building, is vast and bathed in light, hence a slightly bleached-out look to the work. I am again seen reflected, concentrating .. rather a cheerful piece by my standards! I am not sure if it is finished....

a bientot

Jane

Just Testing

There, you see, this is what happens when an only averagely tecchie artist googles "blogspot" with the vaguest notion of making a blog. I have not much idea of what I am doing as I stumble around this template programme but somehow I seem to have a blog now - just like that - so far so good... hello everyone.

My blog is going to be a place to share my artworks - mostly life-model and sensual figurative paintings, fairly fresh from the easel. But as I have yet to discover how to insert a picture that is something that remains no more than a forlorn hope for now. Aha - just spotted a button on the toolbar that might be able to help me... Bingo! Look! A picture. This is "Self portrait with Model" which I made a few months ago in oils on canvas, about one meter by one meter thirty, while Gosia posed for one hour. The painting is about the desire the painter feels for the model. It is not really a carnal desire but a desire for the model's beauty as a human form to inspire an artistic result. Only having an hour I had to work fast and not think too much. Hence a sketchy result which I hope makes the painting breathe.

Now I wonder if this rather accelerated introduction to blogging is going to work... ??? ... publish and be dammed, I say! If it works I will post some rather more recent works soon.

a bientot

Jane