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Mona Series 08 - 09
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Paintings 07 - 08
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Paintings 05 - 06
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Paintings 02 - 04
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Drawings and Paintings 99 - 02
16.02.2009
Jane Barthes contemporary artist
The Work /Biography/ Contact / Links
The Work
My drawing and painting are a personal journey, building on ideas as they come and go.
I consider myself primarily a draughtswoman, my main preoccupation has always been with drawing, for ever searching for new ways to exploit it. It began in the 1980’s with comic strips that naturally over time, took me on a trip far beyond the realms of illustration. Many years later, I’m seeking to reintegrate the comics, in an attempt to juxtapose the existing categories and assumptions we hold about fine art and illustration. The main character Mona belongs to me, I invented her, so she is part of a common thread that links every aspect of my painting. I offer only fragments of the comic stories so they in no way dominate the picture. I seek to preserve an overall sense of pure painting when viewed from a distance. In this way, I continue to be true to my original obsession with space, and all manner of line and form on a two dimensional surface.
I have been busy with form but have dug deeper, to return to form in new ways. I’m fascinated by what lies behind it, before it materializes. Here and there I will hint at the figurative, but never for long as figuration is abstraction into possibility. I feel a bit like a physicist with her molecules occupying an obscure corner of ‘science’. Everything in existence, when stripped to its essence becomes merely matter and energy. I was a useless student in physics; however, through drawing and paint, I sometimes feel I have, almost accidentally access to the same Knowledge without trying to pin it down or possess it. The results, I hope, reveal a natural order, even harmony.
Geometric systems and patterns are essential components that have consistently punctuated the work. At once independent, yet utterly connected, they are simply a different manifestation of matter and energy. They provide a structure and a passage or windows to the deeper levels, behind form and the layers of time that I wish to explore, a realm I believe precedes all intellectual thought. They also happen to provide an exciting cellular structure for the comic strip to weave its way through.
My choice to work predominantly in black and white is also important. I remain very true to the idea of a drawing. However, colour makes a regular, bold but restrained appearance. A restricted palette holds a binary logic that enables me to deal with opposite values, to unify what is tangible and invisible, and hopefully attain what I consider to be essential. The use of white, the empty areas of the canvas, what I call the negative space, is also required to do much of the work. Contrary to what one might imagine, emptiness is full, everything seems to spring from nothing.
To conclude, the work has always and continues to be a search for what is essential. To touch what is essential is something difficult to explain, there are no words, I can only describe it as an experience. Nothing is static, everything is going somewhere … it is much cleverer than I am. It is about being in touch with something far greater than I am, only momentarily but it is what informs and makes sense of the mundane.
Biography
Contact
janebarthes@gmail.com
Links
Books
100 Artists of the Southwest
My drawing and painting are a personal journey, building on ideas as they come and go.
I consider myself primarily a draughtswoman, my main preoccupation has always been with drawing, for ever searching for new ways to exploit it. It began in the 1980’s with comic strips that naturally over time, took me on a trip far beyond the realms of illustration. Many years later, I’m seeking to reintegrate the comics, in an attempt to juxtapose the existing categories and assumptions we hold about fine art and illustration. The main character Mona belongs to me, I invented her, so she is part of a common thread that links every aspect of my painting. I offer only fragments of the comic stories so they in no way dominate the picture. I seek to preserve an overall sense of pure painting when viewed from a distance. In this way, I continue to be true to my original obsession with space, and all manner of line and form on a two dimensional surface.
I have been busy with form but have dug deeper, to return to form in new ways. I’m fascinated by what lies behind it, before it materializes. Here and there I will hint at the figurative, but never for long as figuration is abstraction into possibility. I feel a bit like a physicist with her molecules occupying an obscure corner of ‘science’. Everything in existence, when stripped to its essence becomes merely matter and energy. I was a useless student in physics; however, through drawing and paint, I sometimes feel I have, almost accidentally access to the same Knowledge without trying to pin it down or possess it. The results, I hope, reveal a natural order, even harmony.
Geometric systems and patterns are essential components that have consistently punctuated the work. At once independent, yet utterly connected, they are simply a different manifestation of matter and energy. They provide a structure and a passage or windows to the deeper levels, behind form and the layers of time that I wish to explore, a realm I believe precedes all intellectual thought. They also happen to provide an exciting cellular structure for the comic strip to weave its way through.
My choice to work predominantly in black and white is also important. I remain very true to the idea of a drawing. However, colour makes a regular, bold but restrained appearance. A restricted palette holds a binary logic that enables me to deal with opposite values, to unify what is tangible and invisible, and hopefully attain what I consider to be essential. The use of white, the empty areas of the canvas, what I call the negative space, is also required to do much of the work. Contrary to what one might imagine, emptiness is full, everything seems to spring from nothing.
To conclude, the work has always and continues to be a search for what is essential. To touch what is essential is something difficult to explain, there are no words, I can only describe it as an experience. Nothing is static, everything is going somewhere … it is much cleverer than I am. It is about being in touch with something far greater than I am, only momentarily but it is what informs and makes sense of the mundane.
Biography
Contact
janebarthes@gmail.com
Links
Books
100 Artists of the Southwest
