Jane Ostler

Telephone:			07941 837433
Email:			janeostler@gmail.com
Website:			www.janeostler.co.uk
			Painting

Commission Taken • Work for Sale

CATS AND FLOWERS: Post-Crash Photoshop Figuration

 

When you paint you can’t fail but jump into an enormous pool of art.  So many people paint, and have painted over time that there is a gigantic back catalogue of art.  To try to paint is to acknowledge who has painted before you. There is a custom at Art School that you try not to repeat what other people have done before you, nor repeat or mimic.  I am now too old to still be trying to please my teachers, but it is still a goal of mine to be original, and I am aware of many artists that I admire, such as Leonard McCoomb, David Salle, Michael Craig-Martin, Andy Warhol, Eduardo Paolozzi, Claes Oldenberg, Edward Bawden, Henri Matisse, Mary Fedden, Mary Cassat, Gwen John and Winifred Nicholson.

 

Where do we fit in today?  Are we in Post Process-based Minimalism, Post Modernism, Post Feminism, Post Colonialism, Post-Crash Photoshop Abstraction? Does it matter?

 

Flowers.

Flat space, with an all over pattern…that is how flowers and plants can work, as a textile pattern, or a decorative fabric.  Take an object like a tea towel or curtain.

A painting is an object, but they are objects with paintings on them.  A painting provokes ideas or thoughts.  So can any object. A painting harnesses emotions and feelings.  So can a photograph. A painting reflects our observation or can act like a kind of visual list with layers of images, one on top of another or juxtaposed in a neutral kind of space. A painting is a document which carries the frail hopes of someone trying to entertain but also to learn.  Painting as a process offers numerous opportunities for reflection as you go along.  Filling in the blanks, painting inside previously drawn lines with colour or desperately fighting through chaos until a level of balance or truth is achieved, is in itself an enjoyable thing to do.  Manoeuvring ever more tightly in the tiny space left by the painters who’ve done it before us is almost fractal in its dimensions; just when you thought there was no more room, a vast ocean of possibilities opens up before you.

 

Jane Ostler, June 2011

Level Best Art Café, Colchester.

 

 

 

Open Studio Dates Available: Member Only

 

More Info: