Author Archives: Jennifer Mawby

studio journal |

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Small and intimate

When I first started painting seriously I was travelling and making my money by being photographed. I was making small, intimate paintings that I could cradle and hold in one arm while painting with the other. The subject matter could be described as proto-selfies. I sketched my own body looking down at it from a first person cinematic point of view. Mostly sketched while I lay in bed between rumpled sheets, the motif was a classical one of the female nude and drapery which I then rendered in a flat and graphic way. Not cartoonish nor graphic (like the 80’s artist Nagel) because the lines quavered and varied. The paint was dry gouache on linen. The dryer and chalkier the better. I loved the way that the paint absorbed the light and had a real world quality — it was not glossy or finished. There was an accessibility to the material. There was a system. Objects were painted in 3 variations of a colour tone. Shapes were outlined.  Some of the ways that I am working now on paintings (the smaller scale, the return to the figure, contour drawing, flatness and mattness in paint against brushiness and sheen) feel the same as the experiences of painting this past work — and it feels good. It feels like I’m connected to something authentic.

caulfield-room3-95cau0007 caulfield-the-blue-posts-1989 caulfield-Reception-C-300 patrick-caulfield-hemingway-never-ate-here-1999 Braque Curtain 2005 by Patrick Caulfield 1936-2005 caulfield-Lounge-C-300 caulfield-the-register-a caulfield-hedonescau0009 Caulfield-a4bc8c2c5b52c839b0a9c160970312b0–lamb-patrick-obrian
Research |

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Flat Modern World

I’m looking carefully at Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005). Trolling the hashtag on Instagram. Searching installation images of a recent show at The Approach Gallery in London. The flat shapes. The tableau of the quotidian. The geometry against painterly realism. The occasional and thrilling pop of impasto straight from the tube. The paintings hold markers of the time in which they were made: pop art, graphic screen printing, flatness, dull and browned palette, objects now obsolete (desk pen connected to a stand by a ball chain; push button telephone; repositionable wall lights; ochre ceramic casserole dishes), awkward and overwrought arrangements of food and fruit, half drunk whisky and wine glasses. There is contrast, humour, colour, flatness and strong, black outlines.

influencers Magritte and Matisse and his influencees Gary Hume and Julian Opie (and others).

Compositions of domesticity and urbanism. Compositions with a space and a stillness which passes for a kind of reverence and contemplation.

I’m taking notes and making studies of all this. Contemplating and considering.

1215931_orig mudra buddha-and-mudra
Uncategorized |

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Mudra

A mudra (/muˈdrɑː/ ( listen); Sanskrit मुद्रा, “seal”, “mark”, or “gesture”; Tibetan: ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ THL chakgya) is a symbolic or ritual gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism. While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers.

I’m interested in the mudra as form, as gesture, as cultural appropriation by the west through yoga and meditation, and the history of the hand as a subject of fine and classical art and study in drawing, painting, and sculpture.

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For immediate release:

Artist statement hashtag inventory update.

#cyberspace #avatar #postanalog #postanalogpainting #negativespace #IRL #feels #photoshop #transparency #gifgif #remix #virtual #binarycode #onesandzeros

Artist Statement |

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I want to make you curious

I am interested in making intense and intimate little paintings. Paintings that are strange and complicated. Paintings that look like something new. Paintings that complicate themselves as they are made through layers, and rules, and a “system”. The paintings then fight against that same rigor to retain their moments of painterliness and intuitive gesture.

They have an alien beauty.

They are not “deskilled” — they are heavily constructed.

The colours are riotous and the textures and brush strokes are luscious. You can almost imagine a smell. You want to lick them but you are completely uncertain about how they will taste. Bitter metallic, sweet and sour, or salty? Are they like petrol, earth, and bubble gum coated in cinnamon powder?

You’ll have to try.

I want them to be unfamiliar but curious.

I want to make you curious.

manray-airbrush la-voliere-man-ray man-ray-admiration-cinematograph may-ray-the-eye
Frictionless Painting, Ideas, Research |

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Man Ray and the “frictionless”

Ray, considered the only American Dadaist, learned to use the airbrush while working in an ad agency in New York City between 1917 and 1919.  His fine art airbrush renderings were shown in NYC galleries and called 岯graphs.p; Looking at them with today’s standards of what we consider airbrush painting, these works of art would be considered simplisticå´ at that time, totally new.  They consisted of images developed by airbrushing around found objects, such as paper cutouts, tools and paper clips that were used simply as stencils.  Man Ray worked flat on a table, allowing gravity to hold the stencils in place, and sprayed around them with black ink.  He repeated these images in both opaque and transparent ink and the end products