Jessica Russ

Paintings 2019

My paintings are mental landscapes whose forms suggest the curves of a body as much as geometrical serendipity.  The initial shapes drawn in pencil on the canvas must therefore be sufficiently ambiguous to be wholly abstract. 

Overlap of the abstract forms moves in the direction of a certain figuration.  It should be fugitive, difficult to name. 

Then the colourist takes over.  The forms drawn in solid colours take control, are decisive,  precise to the extent that no concession is possible.  Perspective disappears, the eye can no longer distinguish what is in the foreground or in the background. 

The search for colour is perhaps the most spontaneous part of my work.  In this I invite randomness by introducing left-over colour mixes from previous paintings and create a ‘colour cycle’, my palette, unique to my painting.

With the radical superposition of lines onto the coloured forms, I bring the drawing to the forefront and liberate my gestures.  In fact, the action of drawing with the paintbrush is for me a way of introducing movement into the compositions which brings greater immobility, suspended time.  Thus two temporalities confront each other in the same time-space; that of the painted canvas. 

David Weishaar

My work is concerned with the proximity of the surface of my paintings, of my subjects and of the observer.  I see painting as a conduit between the observer and myself through which my experiences become tangible or perceptible. 

I centre my work on ideas of love and desire because both are fundamental human experiences but also on what makes me, or could have made me, different.  I often feel that opinions about queer-ness do not reflect my own experience.  Located between introspection and the reproduction of external appearances, I see my work as a response to subtle but widespread dehumanisation of desire or identity. 

As I work, I look for affinities between textures, signs or the relationship between colours and moments of my life from the banal to the symbolic.  The different ways in which I approach the surface of a canvas determines my relationship with the image and shapes its emotional story.  Drawn from photographs or observational drawings, my paintings depict people close to me.  I believe that the images I use are indications of the psychological universe of the painting – colours and textures bring an emotional contribution.  Emphasising colour and gesture, I try to create a link to the observer which speaks of shared feelings, of the body we inhabit.

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