Our studio welcomed artist, illustrator and educator Brigid Collins on Saturday 12th November to lead her Making a ‘Book-Object’ workshop. I took part and enjoyed her processes, particularly her concept of ‘poem houses’  – making structures with wire and tissue paper, making them robust with shellac varnish, and creating an intimate space for the poems. She then works with text and found objects to add insertions which add suggestion and resonance.  I immediately saw that I could express something about fragility and strength with the medium, about interior and exterior, and with things seen and unseen. I wanted to create a mobile from several of these objects. I think its going to be part of a larger body of work, a project based on lived experience and memory.  I’ll write a bit more about this in a future posts…

“The formation of memories gives us all a sense of who we are as human beings. For an artist, this can be as immediate as turning one’s gaze from the object to the easel. Other types of memory involve recalling skills, techniques and ideas gained through careful study and observation. Artists also create rich storehouses of impressions and images from which to form their own individual visual vocabulary. In so doing, they offer visual expressions of the world which can relate to shared, or communal experiences. The art of memory can thus also be the art of empathy.”

“A language is a dialect with literature”

from ‘Putting our identity into our own words – the connection between languages, literature and common humanity’ The National September 23rd 2016

“A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colours, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it was was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly , as if a bolt of lightning elucidated the earth. Now I live in a painful planet, transparent as ice; but it is as if I had learned everything in seconds.”

I had to write a blurb for the Central Fife Open Studios brochure, and this helped me to really think about what I’m doing and what inspires me. So this is the way my writing appears on my page on the CFOS website:

“Jane works mainly with acrylic, wax pigment and collage on abstract paintings, and with photography, drawing, collage and ink on figurative works.

n her paintings she works instinctively, exploring the mobility of the painted surface, while mindfully underlying or overlying the composition with order, measure and balance. Jane often takes inspiration from micro and macro scales in natural forms. In the figurative works she is fascinated by the intersections between personal memory and history.” 

Inverstudios is going to be open for the Central Fife Open Studios! On 17th & 18th September 2016. I’m so excited to be a part of this. The CFOS 2016 website is up and running but it will be worked on as the weeks pass – with more images added of the artists’ work.