Art Journal Post July 2015 by Jenny Meehan
The Story So Far
1 — 21 Jul 2015 at W3 Gallery in London, United Kingdom
Very quick post, for me, especially, but as this is happening now probably best to throw it out there …
Information about “The Story So Far currently showing in Acton, with two of my photographic artworks included:
http://wsimag.com/art/16449-the-story-so-far
http://wsimag.com/art/16449-the-story-so-far… Wall Street International Art section…
Oh that is a first for me, to have something in an American publication.. but note the image they show is actually called “Snow White”… as below…
work information for my art at The Story So Far…
Name Of Artist Jenny Meehan
Title Of Work, “Snow White” 2015
Medium Of Work Photographic print on metallic paper.
“Snow White” is an image which evokes feelings of a dreamlike imaginative existence.. The girl, dressed as Snow White, through dramatic play, makes this idea of herself become a reality, in her own imagination. Stories enable us to experiment and imagine.
Price: £100
jenny meehan photo black white
snow white image by jenny meehan The Story So Far
1 — 21 Jul 2015 at W3 Gallery in London, United Kingdom
I have shown both the black and white and colour version, the colour version is part of “The Story so Far” exhibition.
Also on show at “The Story so Far”:
Name Of Artist Jenny Meehan
Title Of Work, “I Cannot Turn the Page- version 2” 2014
Medium Of Work Ink jet print on bond paper, folded.
“I Cannot Turn the Page – version 2” Is one version of a series of work exploring recovery from childhood trauma. In this image you see the witch in the Snow White fairy tale on the pages of the book, yet the real witch, or source of evil, looks down on the main subject, the frightened child.
I cannot turn the page version 2 by jenny meehan,The Story So Far
1 — 21 Jul 2015 at W3 Gallery in London, United Kingdom
Information on the show which is running at the mo:
The Story So Far
1 — 21 Jul 2015 at W3 Gallery in London, United Kingdom
Ann Philippas , The First Witness
The Arts Council funded ‘The Story So Far’ is creating an ‘arts & story trail’ from one end of Ealing to the other. The library anchors have been linked via a range of engaging activities, commissions and exhibits in literary and visual arts. The aim is to increase library and cultural activity engagement through the themes of sharing core stories and giving life to books. It initiates the first partnership between the Council, libraries, Cultural Community Solutions, Acton Arts Forum, the local arts sector and artists.
‘The Story So Far’ has the overarching themes of giving life to books by using different art forms, interpreting story themes and sharing stories across communities such as creation stories. The project is fostering greater engagement of arts and culture through the high-profile programme of activities and exhibits of visual and literary arts. It is developing the arts in Ealing by fostering partnerships between artists, arts organisations and libraries. We are supporting opportunities for artists to create and share new work, and widening audiences for the arts in Ealing through new venues and contexts.
Artistic expression interpreting the literary theme includes artwork on themes rooted in stories, myths, folklore and other literary inspiration. The artwork has been created in medium ranging through painting, performance, video, audio, text, photography, sculpture, drawing and more.
Participating artists: Tanya Loi, Jo Cheung, Katerina Sidorova, Jane Webb, Jenny Meehan, Tony Rickaby, Nick Cash, Emily Lazerwitz, Leanna Moran, Ben Walker, Martin Lau, Sam Welton, Wendy Charlton, Natalia Skobeeva, Matt Valentine, Ingrid Ung, Emma Finch, Heidi Jukes, Linda Haysman, Nicholas Vaughan, Dawes Gray, Myrto Karanika & Jeremy Keenan, Ann Philippas, Luke Haenlein, Anna Fafaliou, Marcella Reardon.
W3 Gallery
185 High Street, Acton
London W3 9DJ United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 89936158
w3actongallery@gmail.com
http://www.w3gallery.org.uk
Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday from 11am to 7pm
Sunday from 2pm to 5pm
General Statement
Human experience, emotion, and my own personal life journey form the centre of my work. The brokenness of human experience fascinates me, as well as the potential for growth and renewal. I trained as an artist through the short course programme at West Dean College and through adult education provision, and have an ongoing interest in the relationships between visual art and writing, fostered through a BA Honours in Literature. I’m based in Chessington, Surrey, and exhibit widely across the UK
Apple Orchard Painting
Apple Orchard Painting ©jenny meehan
I’ve found the perfect quote for my painting “The Apple Orchard”. I painted this in 2009 at a time when my life felt like it was falling apart, or rather more accurately, I experienced a loss of my sense of self along with many external stressful circumstances. I later donated this painting to the first psychotherapist I saw… It was right to do so, because the painting was indeed a true image of my inner story at the time. Her diligent work showed me the way forward at a time I did not have the ability to see any way forward at all.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could”.
Quote by Louise Erdrich in “The Painted Drum”
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright in all images by Jenny Meehan is held by the artist.
Permission must be sought in advance if you wish to use images by Jenny Meehan. In the first instance, please contact Jenny Meehan. Copyright for all works of art by Jenny Meehan is managed by the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) in the UK.
If you wish to licence a work of art by Jenny Meehan, please contact DACS as indicated below:
Design and Artist Copyright Society
33 Old Bethnal Green Road
London E2 6A3A
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7336 8811
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7336 8822
email: info@dacs.org.uk
website: http://www.dacs.org.uk
Offices are open 0930 – 1700 Monday through Friday.
Art Journal Post July 2015 by Jenny Meehan
Ah, how I love long never ending titles! And meandering discourse.
As per usual, skim as fast or slow as you need…I always pack lots of too much of everything in!
Francis Thompson
From: ‘In No Strange Land’ by Francis Thompson
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee.
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air –
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
From ‘In No Strange Land’ by Francis Thompson
Willi Baumeister
I have been looking on the net again at the work of Willi Baumeister, who is one of my favourite influences, and was reminded again of his use of sand in painting. I started using sand a while back, but now use very tiny glass beads as they have little colour and reflect light very consistently. Recently while painting, I pressed some of the smallest micron beads into the surface of some very full bodied paint and the effect was very pleasing indeed. I think if I put any kind of varnish on top (I normally put a very thin layer of varnish on my acrylic paintings in order to protect them) the effect will be ruined, but with the thickness of the paint I have pressed the tiny glass pieces into, thankfully there is plenty of grip there, so I should think there will be no need for any further application, certainly on the fixing front, at least.
I always try to try something new when I start a group of paintings. While I wouldn’t say that I work in a series, at all, the various paintings sessions normally leave their mark in terms of the colour groupings I use, or new experiments tried out. And I am finding myself rather attracted to working on paintings in pairs…though their relationship won’t stay intimate I don’t think, somehow working on two at a time works well for me, at least in the initial stages.
Back to Willi Baumeister
And here, a quotation from the wiki information on his work, which is of particular interest to me:
“Baumeister took part in his first exhibition in 1910, showing figurative works inspired by impressionism. His chief interest was even at this time already in cubism and Paul Cézanne, whose work remained important to him throughout his life. These influences of impressionism and cubism that shaped Baumeister’s early paintings played an essential role in his work until the end of the 1920s. On the one hand, his representational painting was increasingly reduced (abstracting and geometric) as it gained form and lost depth. Parallel to the paintings of his friend Oskar Schlemmer, Baumeister’s independent exploration of form and color emerged. Already around 1919, his teacher Adolf Hölzel wrote to him: “Out of all of us, you will be the one who will achieve the most.” Also worth noticing is that the idiosyncratic German path into modernism, expressionism, barely resonates at all in Baumeister’s work, even though he had met, for instance, Franz Marc earlier on, and was certainly acquainted with the works of the Brücke (Bridge) artists and those of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider).
After his return from the First World War, Baumeister rigorously developed his work further. Although one still finds figurative elements in his paintings, the forms grew increasingly geometric and took on a dynamic of their own, and Baumeister broke the traditional connection between form and color. Various work groups emerged at this time, including the relief-like wall pictures, and paintings with sports theme (as a symbol for modernity). In his painting, the grappling with shapes and material of the painting as well as the relationship between reality and representation became visible. Parallel to this development, nonrepresentational painting began to gain a foothold in works that centered on geometric shapes and their relationships to one another in the picture (e.g. Planar Relation of 1920). Baumeister’s lively exchange with other German and foreign artists must also be seen as vitally important in the consequent development of his work. Indeed, as it was for many of his fellow artists, posing such questions was part of the agenda of the modern age (for example, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Amédée Ozenfant, Le Corbusier, Paul Klee).
Towards the end of the 1920s, the shapes in Baumeister’s pictures grew softer. His paintings moved away from being oriented by the elementary shapes of the circle, triangle, and square towards organic forms. Although this development could also be observed concurrently in the work of other artists of his time, in Baumeister’s case, it was tied to his fascination for the prehistoric and archaic paintings. Baumeister intensely explored artifacts of early paintings and integrated this pictorial experience into his own painting. He identified the symbols, signs, and figures of cave painting as components of a valid archaic pictorial language that he used in his works. These included his increasing number of paintings in “oil on sand on canvas” that, in their materials, also approached the cave painting that Baumeister so admired (beg. ca. 1933). He himself collected examples of prehistoric findings, small sculptures, and tools, and occupied himself with cliff drawings that had been discovered in Rhodesia. This experience was undoubtedly important for Baumeister’s artistic disposition since he, evidently inspired by this rich store of prehistoric works, ultimately used extraordinarily reduced organic shapes for his “ideograms” (beg. ca. 1937). In these works he used a unique world of signs, which he saw as symbols for the laws of nature, their evolution, and human existence.”
What a brilliant inspiration Baumeister is… and how grateful I am to both read and see with such ease the paths trodden down so well…!!! I haven’t yet read his “The Unknown in Art” but it is on my reading list, which, as ever is extremely long!!!!!
Family History
I do have some German blood in me…my mother was German-Swiss (Eleonora Rosa Eicher) My mother’s father is recorded as “unknown” . I went to Basel as a child once, to visit my Granny Josefina Rosa Eicher in Basel. It was a lovely time. But so much is forever going to remain unknown, for me. How I just wish I had spoken more to both my parents when they were alive!
A very vivid memory from this time which stands out for me was a visit to the Glacier Garden in Lucerne. Seeing the glacial potholes made a HUGE impression on me… I can remember it so well, and I am quite sure that this experience is seeping into my interests right now with, well, basically rock and water!…. The solid like areas in my paintings, related to my own life/experience, are metaphors for rock and the rest increasingly resonates of water/fluidity of various kinds, emotional as well as physical.
“These impressive potholes were formed at the bottom of the glacier by the sheer force of the water. As is still the case in alpine glaciers today, the melt water initially flowed on the surface of the ice before seeping into the glacier through fissures. At the bottom of the glacier the water was under tremendous pressure. As the flow of water gathered speed, vortices with speeds of up to 200 km/h began to form. Within a few years, potholes had been eroded out of the rock. Most of the erosion was created by sand and gravel that was transported with the cloudy melt-water.”
I also remember a very exciting trip up Mount Pilatus, and a boat ride on the Lake. It was a completely “out of the world” or the usual world, at least, experience for me, and so I am not surprised that it has such a lasting impression!
Afterthoughts
There are plenty of reasons to look back, and with the wonders of digital image manipulation software, I can play with past paintings in a way that previous generations of artists have not had at their disposal. While I don’t see my experiments with past paintings combined with digital image manipulation as works in their own right, they are, however valuable “Afterthoughts” and I have taken to calling them that. For they must have some kind of name, even though they don’t express anything different from the paintings which brought them into being. To take some sections, to make alterations…Sometimes something new, in it’s own right, does emerge, and it will be named accordingly, because I discovered something within it. In the end, my main objective is to experiment, and so, this is just another way to do so. In the process of re-examining the painting, it’s surface, and the colours, I am also currently informing the original paintings which I carry out. So it is “win win”.
Working on some smaller works… prints… very colourist/expressionist/textural… An interesting development for me…
jenny meehan textural colourful abstract painting afterthoughts into the ocean deep series
© Jenny Meehan.
jenny meehan textural colourful abstract painting afterthoughts
© Jenny Meehan
jenny meehan textural colourful abstract painting afterthoughts
© Jenny Meehan
jenny meehan textural colourful abstract painting afterthoughts
© Jenny Meehan
jenny meehan textural colourful abstract painting afterthoughts
© Jenny Meehan
I might well title them in the future, but often ideas take time to emerge, and I don’t push it.
A Letter in Mind
A Letter in Mind is running again this year.
I was very pleased that my work was purchased last year….So good to know it did some worthwhile good, as well as being what it was. I am entering again this year, and hopefully the work will also come to good use!
How to Support Jenny Meehan
If you like my art working and would like to support me you can! Pop
Paypal.me/jennymeehan
in your browser and follow instructions. There’s no option for me to thank you via the PayPal Me process but do contact me via contact form and let me know if you have gifted me so I can thank you.
You can buy my original paintings… Just contact me via the contact form.
Also available via redbubble, the well known print on demand marketplace, you can buy unsigned prints on many substrates.
Take a look here, any problems locating it feel free to contact me via the contact page on this Art Journal/ Artist Blog
It’s also a good place to get a feel for quite a big strand of my creative artworking. Any problems locating what you want, feel free to contact me via the contact page on this Art Journal/ Artist Blog jennyjimjams.redbubble.com
I have mostly the abstract, flat colour geometrical art in Redbubble as it makes nice prints. I selected work for that platform in order to help my work become more accessible. There’s also a lot of surface pattern designs. I find creating patterns very therapeutic!
The main style of my original painting is Lyrical Abstraction/Abstract Expressionism. I also enjoy working with black and white photography tending towards pictorialism. I frequently use collage and digital collage.
“Pushing the Boat out into the Sun”
© Jenny Meehan
“Pushing the Boat out into the Sun” is painted with Silica Sol Mineral Paint (Keim Soldalit, to be exact) on primed board. It works well… reflects light beautifully. The style of my painting varies according to medium… this is only right and fitting, and I like what happens with the mineral paints. I love the metal oxide colours which are needful with working with this type of very alkaline paint. I love mixing the pigments into the paint, which is very creamy and highly light reflective. And this one certainly has a German Expressionist flavour to it!!!(I suspect when I revisit representational painting more in the future, that this painting might well indicate the type of approach and style I take!) It brings memories of the mural I produced several years ago. See here for a You Tube video of the process I used. Gosh, that was a while back. It was great to work on a larger scale, and lovely working outside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8SouQNIs0
The design for this was more planned in advance than my current methods of painting, but that was a necessity…I couldn’t afford to waste paint or time…
school playground mural painted with silicate mineral paints (Beeck and also Keim Soldalit, silica sol )
John T Freeman led some excellent cartooning workshops, and then transferred (exactly as the children had drawn them) the figures onto the mural, deciding on a pleasing placement. The underlying Mondrian-ish style design was created by me, and the children helped me with a lot of the painting.
Children at Trafalgar Junior School working very hard on the bridging primer application for the mural!
That was a few years back! 2011! I haven’t done a mural since, but that’s simply just the way it goes. I was very pleased with the result and it still looks great. It’s pretty hard to get one’s head around working with such a different type of paint, but I learnt a lot. Now I continue using Keim Soldalit and Keim Optil on smaller scale paintings… mixing into them the slaked pigments, and continuing the journey I started all those years ago.
Sorting Out and Looking Back
Never under rate time spent reviewing past work. I have been sorting through some drawers and boxes and finding all kinds of things which have been “in process” for some considerable time! I take some encouragement from finding things which still interest me, and let them influence me afresh, making suggestions into what I am working on at the present time. It’s great fun.
Block Peace Mono type jenny meehan
This piece has already influenced several of the textural acrylic works I am in the midst of, so “thank you very much…my long lost monoprint”.
Surrey Artists Open Studios
This was my first time being part of the Surrey Artists’ Open Studios and I enjoyed it very much indeed. Here are some images of the work I had on show, plus some from the Cass Art “Selfies” Exhibition too:
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
jenny meehan kingston artists open studios events
Thoughts on the Open Studios…
Well, it was lovely in lots of ways.. I like meeting people and talking about my work, so there was a lot of pleasure there. I was disappointed that I did not sell one of the paintings… £250 isn’t bad at all for a large painting, and they take a long time to paint… However, I guess one needs the wall space and also an interest in abstraction, plus the ability to engage with abstract painting, which not everyone has.
I needed to join Surrey Artists’ Open Studios for the year and then also pay to take part in the event on top… I don’t like the idea of paying to simply show what I do, as I have often said before. But it seems this is the norm… On a more positive note, it was wonderful to spend time with some of the other ladies from KAOS! That was brilliant, and the investment of time, at least was certainly worth it. I am just not so sure about the money aspect!
I do plan to take part next year, and I will prepare some smaller work on paper, around the £20, £30, £40 £50 mark… these may have more chance of being brought. My hopes for a collector of fine paintings who didn’t mind investing in one of mine did not materialise. It has happened before, but it seems that it was not to happen this year.
My disappointment has had a good effect though. After the initial slough of despond, I have been painting away today (16th June) in the Sun, and have hurled myself full swing into painting as I do… without much reservation, well, at least at this early stage in the process. Later come painstaking meditation and contemplation, reflection and consideration…it is very slow in the latter stages, very slow indeed.
The problem with abstraction is that it is very hard for the general public to appreciate the skill which goes into it, whereas when they see a horse which looks like a horse, they are bowled over with admiration. I realise I just need to accept this, but it can be hard to stomach at times. I have thought of a few ways that I can continue with my painting and yet still produce little novelties for those that need to see something and know what it is, without needing to invest my time too much in that direction. I do appreciate that there is a huge need for security when looking at art, that means that a lot of head-knowing, and object recognition needs to take place.
I myself love looking at pictures…indeed, my favourite kind of pictures to look at are miniatures… which may be rather surprising… One of my favourite occupations which I do from time to time is to pop into Llewllyn Alexander (Fine Paintings) near Waterloo Station and look at their collection.
Photography
As I have rather a lot of photography in my archives, and I find it helpful to dig it up from time to time to remember what inspired me enough to take a photograph in the first place, here are some more images from the archives! A very suitable start, I think, therefore with this rusted old spade!
jenny meehan photography
© Jenny Meehan.
jenny meehan photography metal structure in the temperate house at Kew Gardens
© Jenny Meehan.
jenny meehan photography monochrome
© Jenny Meehan.
While I don’t focus on photography in the way that I used to, it’s still an important part of my work and I often draw on past imagery to inform what I do in the present.
I often say that my abstract work is not really “abstract”…I don’t think such a thing exists… it may be mostly non-objective, but the reality is that it is informed by all my looking, thinking and being, and therefore does have subject matter, even though it is not clear what that is, in an exact way.
My eye is informed by all it sees, and any painting I paint, even if no subject is clear, comes from the world and from natural and man made forms, which have impressed themselves into my subconscious, leaving impressions which are deep and often drawn upon to influence any artistic activities I do.
Looking at these images here, reminds me of some of the visual matter which has impressed me. The interest in surfaces of all kinds, metal (which as a material, has always held a strong interest) and naturally occurring textures and patterns, plus the extensive experimentation with composition which always becomes a necessary part of picture taking/making, resound through the images of my past art working endeavours, and remind me not just of where I was, but where my present interests and occupations come from.
The past is very important indeed in art. I don’t think we pay enough attention to it. The novelty factor is very transient. (Though fun to have…of course).
Copyright Information – Jenny Meehan
Copyright in all images by Jenny Meehan is held by the artist.
Permission must be sought in advance for the reproduction, copying or any other use of any images by Jenny Meehan. Individuals or businesses seeking licenses or permission to use, copy or reproduce any image by Jenny Meehan should, in the first instance, contact Jenny Meehan.
Any persons discovered to be reproducing, copying or using images by Jenny Meehan without prior consent, authorisation or permission will be put on notice that Jenny Meehan is the copyright owner and asked to immediately cease and desist the infringing activity. If a satisfactory response and / or compliance is not forthcoming promptly, the matter will be pursued. For clarification of the laws of copyright, please contact the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS). http://www.dacs.org.uk
Copyright for all visual art by Jenny Meehan is managed by the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) in the UK. If you wish to licence a work of art by Jenny Meehan, please contact Jenny Meehan in the first instance to clarify your requirements.
Licencing an image is quick and easy for both parties and is organised through the Design and Artist Copyright Society. (Note, my images are not shown on the “Art image” selection on the Design and Artist Copyright “Art Image” page. This does NOT mean you cannot apply for a licence from DACS…They simply have a very limited sample selection of work in their “Artimage” page!) If you use their online form and attach the low resolution image of my artwork which you have found on the internet, they will know which image you seek permission for.
Also, please of course feel free to contact me if you are looking for a particular type of artwork image, as I have a large archive of images myself. I will also be able to let you know the maximum size the digital image is available at. If you then wish to licence the artwork image, you would then contact the Design and Artist Copyright Society to arrange the licencing agreement according to your requirements. Once paid and agreed, I then supply the high resolution image directly to you.
If you need any further clarification, the DACS website is clear and very helpful indeed, and they would be happy to help you.
Jenny Meehan - Art Journal 