Frank Bowling – Violence Video Poem – “March/Sabbath” – Luke Hannam – The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
May 11, 2021
March Abstract Painting; Sabbath – Artist Jenny Meehan
March abstract lyrical painting expressionist romantic art artist jenny meehan ©Jenny meehan jennyjimjams
Well, I’m doing very many things right now, but true to my word, I have one of my monthly abstract paintings to show you. In some ways I don’t like showing them quite so soon as I normally keep my paintings hidden for a good few months before I show them, but for this year I will be different. With the Coronavirus pandemic and no Open Studios events I won’t have the usual opportunity to show recent work so I need to display my paintings online a bit more consistently over the course of this year.
This is a painting which includes collaged elements. The roots of my love of painting can be found in several places yet a significant one is time spent gazing at walls in need of repair and decoration. Well, , not just walls, but peeling layers or paper, paint, metal, plastic: coatings and coverings of various kinds subjected to wear and tear, the elements, and the general effects of time! It’s not surprising to me that I now see my fascination emerging in my paintings. I’ve beaten my way through some rigorous experiments with colour and texture, and now expressing the idea of “beauty from brokenness” partly through the use of torn and cut collaged pieces seems to sit well with me.
While I am naming these monthly paintings by each month, it doesn’t agree with me to not think a little deeper, so as is the case with a lot of my original fine paintings I have also given the March painting an additional name; Sabbath. Myself and my husband have been thinking and talking a lot about Sabbath rest, and the need to just stop and have breaks in the passages of activity which run so enthusiastically through.
April’s painting is still in progress… So will be a bit late! And you see, my April blog post has moved into May…. Oh dear!
Frank Bowling Painter
This is an extract from a really interesting read on the artist Frank Bowling.
The constant pushing of boundaries regarding experimentation with paint and materials is obviously very inspiring!
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/frank-bowling-material-explorations
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/frank-bowling-material-explorations
This section on Frank Bowling’s larger poured paintings is a joy to read… Also very interesting is how he changed his painting when in a smaller space in London and makes mie delight again, as always that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”.
“London and the ‘poured paintings’
Always looking for new ways of painting, both in terms of representation and the application of materials, Bowling stopped creating map paintings around 1973. He wanted to remove all signs of direct touch and directed application of paint, to move away from expressionist gesture and ‘invent [new] ways of using the traditional ways of applying paint’.
Thus began a new phase of painting for Bowling when he produced what are now referred to as the ‘poured paintings’.
Bowling created these poured paintings using a self-made wooden contraption that allowed him to tip, tilt and twist the canvas while the paint was poured directly onto it from heights of up to two metres. In this way he could exert a certain level of control over the direction and speed at which the paint travelled down the canvas, while also allowing it to find its own paths. Bowling first experimented with this method in France in 1973 while visiting artist Elizabeth Frink. He then developed the process further when he returned to New York, where the large loft space he rented lent itself to such a physical and expansive technique.
The tilting platform was 6 ft 6 in (198 cm) in length and had pins in the legs at one end that allowed Bowling to adjust the angle of the board and thereby the speed at which the paint travelled. Bowling tacked raw cotton duck canvas onto this board, then soaked the canvas in soapy water until it was dripping wet in order to release the surface tension of the fibres so that the ‘surface becomes taut and allows the paint to move more smoothly and easily down the surface’.
and
“After this, the paint was applied at the upper edge of the canvas, and the board was lifted and the paint allowed to run and spill down to the bottom, resulting in richly layered shifts of colour. Agility was key; Bowling made these paintings completely alone and ran between the two ends of the mechanism, tilting and then catching it again before the paint reached the bottom so that the colours swirled back on themselves. As Bowling described it: ‘I gradually take the pegs out of the table legs so the paint just gradually moved from high to low. And of course, you have to watch it like a hawk because it could run too fast and then you’d have to settle it down. And then sometimes I would let it just go whoosh.'”
After this extract, the article then goes on to describe how the limited studio space Frank Bowling had when in London affected his paintings and also how the way the paint was dried very quickly, (out of necessity due to limited space) , produced paint effects which Frank Bowling liked and replicated later.
I find it comforting to read this… Its an example of how what can first appear as restrictions don’t automatically mean the outcome of them is restrictive. With my own painting what I do is certainly affected, for example, by the seasons. Activities carried out in the Studio Tent are different to those painting experiments and experiences done in the garden. The weather has a big impact. I too use different drying conditions to influence what happens with the paint. I use light and the way is varies over the course of the year to direct the kind of creative calendar I follow. It is an inspiring and wonderful thing to respond naturally in a spirit of exploration and positive anticipation of new things coming out of apparent limitations.
I remember seeing a programme on Frank Bowling… I think it was last year, and though he then relied on others more physically due to restrictions on his own mobility, it wasn’t a negative… It isn’t… It is just difference of circumstances and adaptions and changes which alter a process. It is no “less” Frank Bowling’s painting.
When we face change it involves loss. But it is not loss into nothingness. It is a movement into more. Its just we don’t know what that more is, and it can be scary because of that.
I sometimes think this is why I love painting so much? I put myself constantly in a place of risk. It may be an odd aspect of having been too well acquainted with fear, insecurity and trauma in my developmental years? Maybe a positive aspect is that fear in the realm of painting actually seems very safe in comparison? I don’t know… I could be getting over analytical here but it’s an interesting consideration I feel.
Coronavirus Pandemic Art Design Project
On a slightly different matter, I would again like to include something about my Coronavirus Pandemic creative art project. It is the case that now the weather is improving and I am able to move into my Studio Tent. So, rather like the birds in their nests, after much moving around of objects and clutter, and rearrangement of elements, a place is prepared for the birth of new wonders…
YES….it is the beginning of the painting season for me! So I will be less on the computer! But I do still add the occasional new design option for my facecovering range. I will continue to do so. Even with the vaccinations I think this Pandemic will need a lot of patience and the wearing of facecoverings is going to be a long term experience for us all.
My coronavirus pandemic creative art project is focused on disability awareness, specifically with respect to those who are hard of hearing, deaf, or Deaf. This has provided a useful option for face coverings I believe and its my way of using my creative abilities in a more explicitly useful way.
I hope they are helpful and do please give your feedback for this coronavirus pandemic creative project as I’ve been working hard and feel passionate about it being a useful resource.
Here are some examples from the range:
Digital Innovations in Mental Health Conference – Project by Dr Becky Inkster
A couple of years ago I contributed to this event by bringing some of my art along for an exhibition as part of the DIMH conference in London. I attended the conference and found it amazing… Very interesting indeed and very well organised. This year it will be online, as it was last year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
I have contributed my short film/video
Violence Video Poem by Artist/ Writer Jenny Meehan
I created this video poem over March 2021.
My understanding of a vigil is that it might be a place where we stand together, and draw our attention to the shared experience of gender based violence. As a survivor, shame can be isolating, yet for even those women and girls who don’t have a direct experience, they, too, feel the effects of gender based violence of many kinds in our societies and communities. It leaves its mark. It devalues us, making us a commodity. It objectifies. It deletes. It silences. It can destroy a sense of self, and rob a person of a concept of their value.
In my video, I read a poem I initially wrote way back in 2013. You also hear variations of the reading; though they are spoken by me in the video, my intention is that they symbolise many different peoples voices; suggesting not only a singular testimony but a corporate one. There are many different visual references in the short film, but they are best just viewed without my additional comments I think.
Some background information on the poem:
I contributed three pieces of my visual art to an exhibition at Embrace Arts, the University of Leicester’s Arts Centre, January to March 2014, which was part of a research project and Symposium called “Speaking Out; Survivors, Artists and Public Services Against Gender Violence”. My contribution involved answering some questions about some of my own experiences of violence. The process resulted in me writing the poem “Violence”, though it was not included in my submission at the time. I kept it for myself.
My Christian faith is a big dimension of my life, and a constant inspiration, so the concept of a Vigil resonates for me in a particular way in relation to that.
The making of the video has been a devotional act; yes, a form of prayer; through which I have been able to look back on the day (over 35 years ago) in which I was drugged and raped, and hold it in my mind. I have held it in my mind in a way which I was not able to hold it, at all, previously. And in the creation of it, I’ve made it with a consciousness I didn’t have before; that I am one of many – very many – and that the dissociation, the fragmentation of identity, and felt isolation it generated, are a shared experience.
There are many forms of violence. My short film references just one, based on a personal remembrance. But there are thousands and thousands of personal stories, and many voices silenced across the years.
So I hope that the watching of this video is indeed a period of devotional watching for others, not only myself. It’s my way of participating in a wave of awareness and watchfulness which I hope will contribute in some respects to help effect positive change in our societies and communities worldwide.
https://jennymeehan.wordpress.com/
Original Poem the video is based on:
Violence
is the blinding light which brings
darkness
wipes the words from my lips
removes all trace
of speech
yet tells me to be quiet, and so keeps me from
recalling
the sound of myself.
Violence
Is the blinding light which brings
Complete darkness
Takes the words from my
Open lips
Removes all trace
Of speech
Yet tells me to be quiet,
But I am recalling the sound of myself, that you may see.
Jenny Meehan 2013
And here below is the text submitted for the six still images I selected to be shown as part of the DIMH 2021 Online Conference.
“Jenny Meehan is a British Contemporary Artist based in Surrey/South West London.
“With a process-led approach, I act in response to the materials I work with. It is a spirit and emotion led practice; an articulation of fragmentary experience. All I create is autobiographically rooted and expressionistic. My art working acts as a kind of “re-membering”; a way of bringing things together.
My interest in a contemplative way of life means that I view my art work as a tool which enables the viewer to connect with their own emotions, giving space in a busy world for imagination and connection. Working with abstraction provides an opportunity for openness, allowing the viewer to determine their own path into my work, and this is coloured by their own experience and memory, unique to them.”
While my romantic, lyrical, expressionistic, abstract paintings offer a contemplative space free from cares and concerns, other strands of my practice engage with subjects ranging from violence, trauma recovery, and themes arising from my own experience of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy
My vision for my work centres around the constant need and desire to push creative boundaries and to experiment with and explore the media available to me.”
Artworks
1. “Pen and Ink on a Torn Strip” Jenny Meehan ©Jenny Meehan
Unique Torn Digital Print on Paper.
2. Digital Print of my motif; “Yellow Character/Flight” ©Jenny Meehan
This expresses the “flight” in the “fight-or-flight response” in PTSD. This is available printed on many substrates as wall art and stationery via the print on demand marketplace redbubble:
Jenny Meehan’s Artist Profile:
https://www.redbubble.com/people/jennyjimjams
3. “Dark Night: The dark, too, blooms and sings” Original painting acrylic/mixed media on board ©Jenny Meehan
4. “Sorrow” Paint on paper ©Jenny Meehan
5. “Fugue” Paint on stretched linen.©Jenny Meehan
6. “Figure on Uncertain Ground” Digital Print on Paper ©Jenny Meehan
Luke Hannam Quote
“A great deal of your work is figurative; why is that, and what is it about a person’s character that interests you?
Drawing figures or rather drawing people, which is what you are actually doing, is, I believe, the most direct way of dealing with the complexities of being alive. Human beings are never answers they are always questions and it’s this is quality that I like. For me, pictures or paintings are not political things, they are not trying tell us something specific or change our mind but rather to lead us into unknowable places and allow us to feel rather than to find comfort in knowledge. The human element represents this for me. It’s ultimately about vulnerability and the confidence to tell the truth about your desires and pleasures rather than construct personas that pretend to be wise or worse civilized. “
Affordable Redbubble Art by Jenny Meehan
Look at my artists profile, the main one being https://www.redbubble.com/people/jennyjimjams/shop
Most of my artwork on redbubble is in a geometric abstract style. I favour using softened diffused edges combined with flat colour areas, drawing on colour and pattern to convey a sense of classical harmony. The romantic, emotional, impact of colour on our sense of well-being is a vital ingredient in our lives and its a delight to make my art and design so accessible to all.
I have a lot of patterned and tiled art and design, as well as art images which act a a centrepiece or which stands with slightly more independence. Patterns are very relaxing to look at and communicate to people a sense of balance and order. I’ve used them myself, rather a lot during the coronavirus pandemic to help calm my mind. And this could be a great asset to you too.
To enjoy the rhythmic beauty of pattern in your work environment through motivating and inspiring art helps productivity and happiness in all kinds of workspaces, including home offices.
Buying my art from Redbubble is affordable for all, as companies of any size, and any budget can benefit from my art in the work environment. As we also increasingly working from home, why not make your work space and office space, a place of inspiration? Make your work space a place of inspiration and contemplation!
leap of faith jenny meehan (jennifer meehan) geometrical abstract design artwork fine art print to buy
Redbubble manufacture lots of printed products. Here are my thoughts on two of them:
Redbubble Headscarves
These are one of my favourite types of print. I have them in my own home as they are lightweight, large, and easy to gently hand wash. They come in a square format which I love.
The colours of any fabric printed by the dye sublimation process tend to veer on the bright side, so while I haven’t noticed any fading due to washing I would be fine if there was a bit of fade as I prefer slightly muted colours. However I’ve hand washed mine several times and they look as bright as ever! I have included them in my suggestions for wall art because they look great hanging against a plain white wall. They are slightly transparent, so not good against anything but plain white. They do offer an interesting option for wall art though, and can be easily attached to the wall with hook and loop tape (velcro) or even those very lightweight self adhesive tabs you can get for wall art now. If you used the self adhesive tabs which include a small metal hook, you could make a small cotton loop on the corners of the headscarf and just hook those over.
Description from the Redbubble website;
“Full print is visible on the front and reverse
Microfiber polyester with a slightly transparent effect
Hand wash only. Do not dry clean or tumble dry.”
They are quite see-through, but look great against a plain white wall or room divider, office partition, or office partition.
Redbubble Tapestries
Mm, not quite sure why they call them tapestries, I guess because they are fabric and hang on the wall, but the word tapestry for mean means sewn and embroidered… Quite different.
However, this is actually my favourite type of wall art from Redbubble mostly because it is large scale wall art, easy to store and wash, rich in colour and I feel compliments my flat colour geometric abstract design style particularly well. I have several. As with the scarves, the colours of any fabric printed by the dye sublimation process tend to vere on the bright side. The surface is lovely and has a soft and slightly silky feel which is very good indeed.
Wall Tapestry description from Redbubble website;
“Call it a wall tapestry, call it a wall hanging, call it the new centerpiece of your decor
Intense, vivid colors and fine line detail, printed for you when you order
100% lightweight polyester with finished edge
Cold gentle machine wash, line dry or tumble dry low, do not iron or bleach
Note: There is a 1 – 2 inch (2.5 – 5.0cm) tolerance on all printed textile products.”
PS… I have washed mine by hand with slightly warm water several times and it’s still looking great! These could also be attached to your walls with methods like those I suggested in the headscarves section, though due to the larger size using a pole, or making a small hem and threading cord through the top of the wall hanging, would probably be worth considering too.
When you buy my range of selected art and design via Redbubble, you help sustain my artworking in a way I really appreciate. I get an artists margin each time you buy my work printed on products and you get a good shopping experience via Redbubble. So I can focus on creating and you can access my art easily in an accessible form.
If you do prefer original paintings, I’m producing at least 20 original paintings each year on average, so do contact me directly via the contact form on this blog to let me know what type of abstract/semi abstract painting you are looking for. I don’t post all my original paintings online, and I am happy to carry out a limited amount of commissioned work each year.
I no longer keep a website for the time being at least so please use the contact form here or my other social media if need be.
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
The only time I entered a piece of work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, I did so realising that it would probably get rejected, as the odds of it getting selected were so small. However, I wanted to submit an artwork at least once, and I had a better reason to that year because I have already decided that I wanted my painting to be displayed in a Gallery at Waterloo (sadly no longer) which held a yearly “Not the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition”
Here’s some information on my painting “The Upper Room” (image below) which was selected for the “Not the Royal Academy” exhibition at Llewellyn Alexander (Fine Paintings) LTD in 2013. It is a shame the gallery no longer exists. It was a gallery I often used to visit when in the area, and, as I mentioned, I decided to enter the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that year specifically in order that I might submit my rejected work into the “Not the Royal Academy” show. I was thankfully successful, and very flattered too, because my – very abstract – painting was not usually the type of painting they usually favoured in that particular gallery, which lent towards the representational paintings. When I used to visit, often on my therapy days when I was on my way to Nelson Square, I used to particularly enjoy looking at the miniatures. They were always very friendly and pleasant in there.
So here is my blurb on the Upper Room:
“The Upper Room” is a painting in which I started with no idea of the direction it might take me in, instead responding to each mark and colour as the painting progressed in a process based approach. Using both my instincts and formal considerations, I ended up with this. Its still one I am keen on.
Emotionally, it made me think of the New Testament account of Jesus taking the Last Supper with his disciples, I think because of the sense of presence and warmth it communicated to me emotionally, (The Holy Spirit, the comforter, “I will be with you”) even though it contains a large area of black. Also, because of the way it is held together with a building type structure; upper and a lower areas, and suggestions of both entrance and exit. Pentecost also happened in an “Upper Room” though not the same one, I don’t think.
Here’s more background regarding the “Not the Royal Academy” Exhibition at Llewellyn Alexander…I have copied and pasted it from a past post. It was text used by the gallery to promote their show.
“What happens to the pictures rejected by the Royal Academy?
Every year over eight thousand paintings are submitted to the Summer Exhibition (update… Now the submission limit is set at 16,500 and its always filled up quickly) at the Royal Academy – the largest open art exhibition in the world.
Only around 800 actually make it on to the walls.
So what happens to all the artists that have been rejected?
As soon as the artists get their rejection slips from the Royal Academy many of them collect their pictures and set off across the river to the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery (opposite the Old Vic Theatre) at Waterloo. Artists are told immediately whether their painting has been accepted by the Gallery. Oils, watercolours, mixed media, pastels and drawings of all shapes and sizes pass through the doors of this lively Gallery on the South Bank. Every picture is for sale and the gallery is re-hung with new work at three-weekly intervals throughout the summer, making it a constantly changing show.
NOT THE ROYAL ACADEMY
Inspired by the original “Salon Des Refusés” held in Paris in the 19th Century when artists such as Manet exhibited his rejected and infamous “Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” and Whistler his rejected “Symphony in White – the White Girl”.
That year the exhibition ran FROM 10 JUNE TO 17 AUGUST 2013
This was the only year I entered the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and probably will remain so as I have a very limited budget for Open Exhibition Entries. Basically these kind of Open Submission Art Exhibitions are used as fund raisers by many organisations, though thankfully not all.
I’ve nothing against making donations.. I sometimes do, and it’s often appropriate. However my thoughts on the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition are that it’s a fun, fundraising affair which many enjoy. It is not, however, a means to provide a worthy estimation on an artists work for an art collector or art lover.
So enjoy, submit, if you are able, and visit if you wish. All good.
Don’t, however pretend to yourself that the art submitted is “critiqued” and somehow what gets through, (I refer to the roughly 700 general public members whose work does get through) is anything more than a stroke of luck. It’s a big thrill, and I don’t want to dim the light of that, mostly because it still seems to add status and value to a work if its selected, and that’s very good for an artist. I am always pleased for artists I know when they strike lucky. But let’s be sensible.
How long is spent on looking at the art submitted in the first stage of the process with 16,500 entries? And then the second?
Then your chances are chopped down once more, as when it comes to wall hanging, it’s really just got to be about how it fits in with the decoration/aesthetics of the hang.
So celebrate if you are lucky, as you would with the lottery and any other fortunate event. But if you want your work to be exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, know you may well need to invest a few hundred pounds over the years to make numerous submissions and you may be better off choosing an Open Submission Art Exhibition which you have more chance of getting your work selected in.
I feel it would have been appropriate to lower the artist submission fee of £35 this year, as a material expression of the theme, in which the concept of inclusivity and inclusion appears to feature. Even an artist submission fee of £15, with maybe an additional fee if through to the next round of judging, or a voluntary donation, would still generate a massive amount of money with the 16,500 entries accepted. But it sadly will not be reduced, I predict, because it doesn’t need to be reduced; the demand for artists to enter their work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is huge and they will use that to increase the money they generate from it. It is a charitable organisation. However, I wonder if the submitting artists may also appreciate some of the charitable principles at work in the process of making art submissions to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition too?
If you would like to donate to the Royal Academy in this way, that’s super. No need to take the shine off your kind donation. Bear in mind that this type of event is not inclusive in a true, material, sense, though, and that the artists need to arrange their sales, will pay commission for work sold, (30% I think) pay £35 per work to submit, and incur all costs in providing the art work.
A side thought… How odd it is that when the BBC make programmes on the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition – I mean that one where they show some artist’s applying – One, at least, always gets in! What are the odds of them making the programme and not one of their featured artists getting in? It must be that they know beforehand that at least one will definitely get in, or the programme would not work very well at all. Or maybe the do filming of a larger number and then cut down their selection… However, they must somehow know that at least one artist will make it through, or it would be a very large investment of potentially wasted time! I dislike that; it gives a rather false impression of an artist’s chances of getting selected, surely?
Oh well. It’s obviously not such an “Open” Exhibition. With only around 700/800 general public artworks getting in, and submissions not being anonymous, we realise that the process of selection is certainly a fairly predetermined pathway, in the main, even if not entirely.
Bit of Royal Academy Summer Exhibition History, just a snippet;
“The number of pictures increased each year from 547 in 1781 to 1,165 in 1821 so
they had to be hung frame to frame. The position was determined by the Hanging
Committee and the position of a painting was critical to it being seen.”
If you are an art buyer and really want to support an artist, contact them directly and buy their work from them, direct. Many artists take part in Open Studios events, and are also normally very happy to meet you in order for you to view their artwork by appointment.
Digital Art Image Licensing Information for digital images by Jenny Meehan AKA jennyjimjams.
All images are ©Jenny Meehan. The licensing of my digital images is one of my most important income streams – An income which sustains my creative work. Permission for use is essential.
Most of my image licensing is managed via DACS (a copyright management/collecting society) with some smaller projects/requests managed directly by me. This depends on the project and context.
My image licensing fees are broadly in line with the industry standard, with significant reductions for charities and or smaller projects of special interest to me.
More information on the process of obtaining a licence to use a digital image of my work can be found at the top of the “Quick Stop Art Gallery” online art gallery page.
Here is a link to my online art image gallery:
In case you are not aware, you need to request permission and pay a licence fee if you want to use an artist’s work in anything from merchandise or an advert, to a book, film or website. If an artist’s work is published in any form, permission is needed.
If you require copyright free images, then you will need to source them from a different website, for example a stock photography website or a copyright/royalty free image website.
I trust this is helpful.
Jenny Meehan - Art Journal 