Alison Jardine

On The Edge [Flickr]

Alison Jardine — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:40:44 PDT

On The Edge
oil on canvas
8" x 10"
(c) Alison Jardine 2010

This is the smallest painting I've done in this series. It is in the Mackinney Avenue Contemporary members' show in Dallas, 2010.

Sneek Peeks

Alison — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:07:25 +0000

Here are some close-up sneek peeks at my current works in progress.

46" x 60" - this is a small part of of a beautiful painting with blossoms and branches, and distant trees

40" x 46" - just a teensy weensy glimpse...

50" x 50" ~ just a small piece from the middle - this painting explores sunset and the rise of Venus

40" x 40" ~ a small detail. this is a treasure map, but the details are under the top layer.

sneekpeek-SME [Flickr]

Alison Jardine — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:55:45 PDT

Alison Jardine posted a photo:

sneekpeek-ROV [Flickr]

Alison Jardine — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:55:28 PDT

Alison Jardine posted a photo:

sneekpeek-TM [Flickr]

Alison Jardine — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:55:16 PDT

Alison Jardine posted a photo:

sneek-peek-MR [Flickr]

Alison Jardine — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:55:01 PDT

Alison Jardine posted a photo:

July Newsletter

Alison — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:56:10 +0000

New Artwork Available

Within, Without ~ 36" x 36" oil on canvas. (c) Alison Jardine 2010.

Within, Without is now available at UGallery.
The brilliant colors on the pruned crepe myrtles express the inner life of the trees, and the heat of the day that makes them seem so alive. The pruning of crepe myrtles creates strangely alien knots, and joints, an intentional but unintentional sculpture.

A Year in Review

Highlights From My Year of Art

2009 to 2010 has been a very successful year for my art, and I have been part of many wonderful art events, exhibits and had some very unexpected awards and articles for my art. These are just a few of the highlights of my year so far.

Winner of the Art of Elan competition

Award Winner

Prize-winning Beginnings: The image on the left, Trees Squared (56″ x 56″ oil on canvas) was the first in my Geometric Trees series, that I completed about this time last year. In a way, this painting began my professional life as a full-time artist. It was the winning painting in the Art of Elan competition, in Dallas, which offered $1000 dollar prize, plus a six-month free lease on a gallery and studio space. I finally left this space in April of 2010, with many fond memories and much gratitude to the supportive and creative people who run the Elan properties in Dallas.

Summer Trees ~ 50" x 50" oil on canvas. Available at Ugallery

Ugallery

New Gallery: In December, I was accepted for representation by Ugallery, an online curated art gallery. Unlimited by geography, it offers a unique opportunity to show my work to the art lovers across America, and around the world. I have sold works to collectors from the East to West coast, and also internationally. I hope you will visit the gallery, to see my work there. Ugallery “represents today’s top emerging artists – tomorrow’s art world. An expert panel of curators selects each artist, giving the gallery a diverse and sought-after collection of media, styles, and perspectives. Try any artwork from our collection in your home for seven days with free return shipping.”

Catching Clouds ~ 36" x 36"

Affordable Art Fair, New York

Fairly Fantastic: In May, I had the incredible pleasure of being chosen as one of a handful of artists presented by Ugallery at the Affordable Art Fair in New York City.
I flew in to enjoy the show, in which hundreds of galleries from around the world showed work by a selection of their artists. The preview night featured cocktails and evening gowns on Wednesday, followed by four days and nights of meeting art lovers from New York ~ and beyond. I was interviewed by a British magazine, which appears in their July/August issue! I sold several works there, and was thrilled to meet so many people who connected with my work.

Magazine Features

Sunrise ~ 36" x 36". Available at Ugallery.

Write-ups: I have been featured in three magazines: Poets & Artists self-portrait edition (Fall, 2009); a full-page article in the Face of Chelmsford (UK), and I also was featured on the cover of The Art Guide. I am also very honored that the website of the venerable maker of fine paints, Sennelier,contacted me to feature me as an artist on their site. Coming soon!

It's me, and my Fall Tree

About My Work: Color and movement are the two key elements in my oil paintings, and I compose these into what I call my ‘natural abstractions’; the color embodies emotions and perception, and the movement relates to the human body, an expression of physicality and energy. The tree motif that I frequently use has roots in Jungian psychology, and depicts inner landscapes.

Find Out More… You can find me on twitter (@alisonjardine) ~ Facebook (Alison Jardine) or on my website (alisonjardine.com).

Light Fantastic

Alison — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:19:58 +0000

I Remember... 36" x 36"

Light and the colors in light fascinate me. In my memories, colors sing loudly, and often my memories are of these colors and patterns as the main object. The glowing red fabric shade over a wall light, in my childhood home in the 1970s; the dress made of brown synthetic fabric with cream circles on it that hung in my mother’s wardrobe; the dim dusty yellow glow as the sun set through the curtains in the back bedroom that were closed like silence; the rectangular light that moved across the ceiling at night, as a car drove along the road in front of our house, and then flickered into blackness.

Light is rarely constant; it changes, brightens and dims, and it is as emotive a component of perception as smell or music. The lights in a home can transform our experience of it, and we can play with dark and light, reform the contours, add depth.

Equally, natural outdoor light changes. I have many memories of brightness growing up, such as the lemon sunlight through the colored sheets as they wetly flapped on the washing line in our backyard; the gaps between those sheets that showed slivers of sky, squares of walls, and brick sheds; the emerald green of the field opposite my house and the sharp white lines painted across it; the bright orange of a toy bat in the noon sunlight; the light and shadow moving on the floor as I stand stock still in the woods surrounded by shimmering bluebells; the purple masses of the heather on the top of the Pennines stroked with green and grey, threaded through by brown, glinting streams. The light was modulated, grey, translucently blue, the yellows were lemon at noon, and orange in the evening.

In my travels through Europe as a young adult, I had come to take for granted this delicate light, as in the painted light of southern France, for example. Here, the breath of the sky more gently and with subtlety wraps around the environment, adding to the already rich palette of tones new and endlessly fascinating mixes. The very air seems to be an artist, as laden with color as with scent and warmth.

Look Up! 36" x 36"

Since moving to Texas, I have encountered an entirely new kind of natural light, an intense white-tinted light that insistently covers colors with white, sharp and bright. On a summer day like today in the Texas heat, once the sun has risen beyond early morning the sunlight is incredibly white and blinding. Trying to paint outdoors is hard not just because of the heat, but because your eyes become dazzled. However, under the shade of trees, the colors are made more intense, dancing with vibrancy. I find this so moving that I feel compelled to express it in my work. Later, as the sun descends for the evening, intense reds, and oranges are laid over the natural greens and grays of the countryside, over the stubbornly twisted and flexed trees that twine together along the creeks, the overlay of orange-red bringing an emotive reminder of passion and beauty.

Work in Progress .. "Crepe Myrtles" 36" x36"

This has greatly influenced my work. My colors are vibrant, intense, glowing, delineated by these hot branches, in high-contrast compositions. The shapes and planes of the leaves and trees become massed together as the light eradicates much of the natural modulations, and I often express them as geometric shapes. In them, I am free to use color to tell stories with emotions that connect either to my memories or to emotions and sensations of experiences. Our emotions are deeply affected by the quality of light that surrounds us; in countries with long dark winters, this can lead to depression, for which light therapy is often prescribed. My works are the opposite of that, with intense color that can spark intense reactions, intense emotions, and often are immersive to the viewer. The sun and the light heals me everyday and floods me with profound joy – an old-fashioned word, but one I want to reclaim – and I have to say I can’t get enough of the Texas heat.

Present Imperfect

Alison — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:28:50 +0000

Alas, it was not meant to be.

Today I scrapped a canvas I’d been developing for about three weeks. It had developed considerably from the initial sketch, taking on a life of its own as the image emerged, and I reacted. I really loved the direction it was going so much that I overworked an element, even though it didn’t fit in this particular canvas. Eventually, although it had many good elements, I removed the canvas from the stretchers and binned it. Elements were fussy, and out of balance. In addition, I had manipulated the surface of the painting to a point where it just didn’t pass the grade for my quality control. I just can’t stand to produce an imperfect work.

It is certainly true that I shouldn’t have poured thinner over it and then torn it from its stretchers, but so much emotion goes into painting, and so much of your personality, that sometimes the pot boils over in frustration, a ship on stormy waters, especially after very long painting sessions, like today.

Looking at the photo I took just before I pushed it too far, I am reassured that it would not have been a work I would have wanted to add to my portfolio, as it was. And there was no way I could have made the improvements I wanted to make, without basically painting over much of it.

Nevertheless, I will begin again tomorrow, this time with an improved composition, and with a new idea for what the focus of the painting will be. And it will be even better.

I have learned to accept that the path to improvement is strewn with failures. Trust me when I tell you that this doesn’t make the process any less exasperating, or painful. Allowing myself the space to fail is like allowing myself to take a full, deep breath.

It’s only Art, and there’s always tomorrow. I will begin again.

Daydream Nation

Alison — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:03:53 +0000

I’ve been stretching canvasses today. I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my supports. Not only does making my own allow me to ensure quality, but how the ground layer is finished can radically effect the finish on the painted image.

I choose heavyweight stretcher bars, usually bulk bought on the Internet. Even the very heavyweight stretcher bars that I buy may need crossbraces to keep it rigid. After I’ve created the frame and measured the edges for the correct 90 degree angle, I cut the canvas to size. Again, I buy large rolls of my preferred canvas online ~ for my current Geometric Trees series, I like a ‘portrait’ quality canvas, with extra-smooth weave.

Once I’ve cut my piece of canvas, I start to staple it to the stretchers. My powered staple gun helps me enormously in this part of the process. It is a tricky part for me, as my canvasses are large, and it takes a lot of physical strength for me get the required tautness. I’m often left with fingertips that are raw and bleeding, and aching shoulders.

The next stage is to prepare the canvas surface, and for this, I use a high-quality size and acrylic primer, and I apply several layers of the primer. The final top layer I may sand very lightly, or leave with tooth, depending on whether I want a glossy smooth finish to my paint, or a matte “absorbed” look; this is also affected of course by the medium I mix for each painting. I have many ‘recipes’ that I use; since many of my paintings are layers, I am careful to change the ‘fatness’ of my medium for each layer.

All in all, it is a process that takes several days, plus a week (or more depending on the primer) to ‘cure’ at the end of the process. One day, maybe, I will find a supplier I trust to make them for me. For now, the kinds of pre-stretched canvasses I find in art suppliers just don’t cut the mustard for most of my paintings, especially the large ones.

Daydreams & Dancing

A work that came to me during preparing the canvas...

There is another aspect to this practical task: I daydream while I am making them. Sometimes, ideas for what to put on the canvas float into my brain, it seems, from the materials themselves. I’ll can see (or imagine) pictures, colors, shapes, or, more usually, moods on the surface. By the time a particular canvas is ready to use, I may have an impetus for creation that is rooted in my daydreams during creating the surface itself, rather than the sketches in my sketchbook, or the ideas stored on paper, stuck to the walls of my studio.

Maybe this is because my relationship with my artworks is a very physical one: the act of painting itself can seem like a dance, and this is reflected perhaps in the dances that my tangled tree limbs enact in my paintings. I love physical movement, and I always have, even studying Contemporary Dance many years ago.

My works are my dances, from staple to varnish.

Progress Report – Flesh & Bones

Alison — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:52:42 +0000

I enjoy working on short, one or two day paintings, during the creation of my works that can take many months. As well as making sure I have plenty to work on while layers are drying, they are also a great outlet for my natural drive to create. I don’t cope well if I am cut off from creating, and these smaller works are a lifesaver for me while my larger works progress.

In the same way that working out for keeping slim has the added bonus of toning your body, the added bonus of working on one-session paintings is that it keeps me exploring new ideas, and refining my skills. Artists are perpetual students. We are curious and restless, driven to explore and improve our chosen mode of expression. Each painting is a link in a chain to the next one, and from the previous one, even if the subject matter or style seems at a cursory glance to be unrelated. While a particular artwork may be viewed as an item alone, an artist’s body of work exists as a continuum.

This is an iPhone snap of my completed portrait, after the second session. This has been an exercise in high-key flesh against a dark background, within a more unusual composition. I wanted to explore how dazzling you can make skin, before you lose the ‘color’ of the natural flesh.

Progress Report

Alison — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:40:02 +0000

A new work, a portrait in oils of my daughter. In this afternoon session, I established much of the white on dark composition. Tomorrow, I will add touches of color, both in the face and background.

The next layers in my new painting in my Geometric Trees series have been applied. Many more to go! Each layers considerations of color, and composition, and relationships, but also technically each layer gets a new medium, with a slightly different ‘fatness’.

Works In Progress – My Blue Period

Alison — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:13:35 +0000

The night draws me in, and my works are reflecting this. Three new works are emerging from the subtle tones found just after the sun sets, and before it rises. The motif of the tree provides the structure that is both a compositional element, and a symbolic one. Few things in the human psyche represent adventure, danger, pleasure and fear as much as the icon on the tree, and few have starred in as many of our species’ myths and stories.
Work in Progress... "Dancing with the Stars" Oil, conte crayon, graphite, charcoal on 2" deep cradled wood box, 16" x 20" ($350) - no frame needed “Dancing with the Stars” is oil on board, and I used many different tools to scrape lines away, and add them, including conte crayon, charcoal pencils, graphite pencils, and the tips of brushes. Close up, there are many delicate lines where the paint has been scraped away that connects the white stars with the earth, and the tree, as they drape as delicately as a spiderweb. It is on a 2″ deep cradled wood box, with no need for framing. “Dancing With the Stars” will be available only directly from my studio ($350). If you are interested in reserving it, please email me at alison@alisonjardine.com. Work in Progress ... "Around the Woods At Night" ~ oil on canvas 46" x 32" “Around the Woods At Night” is the latest large piece from my “Geometric Trees” series, based on many of my favorite themes and juxtapositions. Circles and squares contrast with the organic lines of what will become realistic tree branches, twisting away into the canopy. In this work, the negative space of the sky becomes the positive space, it glows in the brightness of the moon. In this artwork, many layers of paint will be needed to achieve the final result. This is week one, third layer… If you are interested in reserving this work, please email me at alison@alisonjardine.com.
More Blue Works in Private Collections "Dot Dot Dash" ~ oil on canvas, 24" x 36" (c) Alison Jardine

The night draws me in, and my works are reflecting this. Three new works are emerging from the subtle tones found just after the sun sets, and before it rises.
The motif of the tree provides the structure that is both a compositional element, and a symbolic one. Few things in the human psyche represent adventure, danger, pleasure and fear as much as the icon on the tree, and few have starred in as many of our species’ myths and stories.

Work in Progress... "Dancing with the Stars" Oil, conte crayon, graphite, charcoal on 2" deep cradled wood box, 16" x 20" ($350) - no frame needed

“Dancing with the Stars” is oil on board, and I used many different tools to scrape lines away, and add them, including conte crayon, charcoal pencils, graphite pencils, and the tips of brushes. Close up, there are many delicate lines where the paint has been scraped away that connects the white stars with the earth, and the tree, as they drape as delicately as a spiderweb. It is on a 2″ deep cradled wood box, with no need for framing. “Dancing With the Stars” will be available only directly from my studio ($350). If you are interested in reserving it, please email me at alison@alisonjardine.com.

Work in Progress ... "Around the Woods At Night" ~ oil on canvas 46" x 32"

“Around the Woods At Night” is the latest large piece from my “Geometric Trees” series, based on many of my favorite themes and juxtapositions. Circles and squares contrast with the organic lines of what will become realistic tree branches, twisting away into the canopy. In this work, the negative space of the sky becomes the positive space, it glows in the brightness of the moon. In this artwork, many layers of paint will be needed to achieve the final result. This is week one, third layer…

If you are interested in reserving this work, please email me at alison@alisonjardine.com.

More Blue Works in Private Collections

"Dot Dot Dash" ~ oil on canvas, 24" x 36" (c) Alison Jardine

Identity in Art: Six New Works

Alison — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:31:21 +0000

Meet the Artist

I’ve been preparing to take works to the Affordable Art Fair in New York (May 6 through 9, 2010), and, as ever, working to a deadline has produced its fair amount of stress. As usual, however, this process has also propelled my understanding of my artistic landscape, which is an emotional and aesthetic one, and the loops and connections that this has with one’s own identity. My paintings describe me, and my experiences, as surely as a biography of words. If all the clues from all my paintings were added together, then it would identify me in time and space as surely as a DNA analysis. As my artistic journey continues, it is imperative that I keep on making new journeys into myself, even to those places that I hide, and disguise. This series of paintings describe my identity as it formed as a child, but also directs the viewer to look and see the world differently, to look and see what I am emphasizing. I distinctly remember seeing before I could comprehend what I was seeing, before I had a grammar in my brain to name and organize. The images are full of bright colors, they move around next to each other without reference to perspective, they are full of intensity and vitality. The ‘space between’ is indistinct, unimportant, and half-remembered. Each imaginary creature was as real as a ‘factual’ creature, I was too young to make a distinction. These remembrances pre-date my verbal development.
		Look Up! is a passionate, powerful painting, with the saturated colors that I find so exciting. I have always had great stores of energy and a sensitive but single-minded nature that has saved me from many difficult situations, kept me going through terrible events, and always offering me a glimpse of something beautiful. Observing such beauty is our moral duty. We may, after all, be the only observers of this in the universe. When all else fails, when all else is gone, if we are still witness to the beauties of the universe, then we belong and we are a miracle. This painting tells the viewer to look and really SEE. In this work, I reduce and simplify my expression: simplicity is eloquent.
I Remember is a piece that places me in the 1970s as a child. The style is referential to the Disney animations I used to lose myself in, at the ‘pictures’ as we called it then, as I grew up and started to understand the world. In painting this picture, I wanted to convey this sense, that we could understand the secrets and messages of the forest, if only we could decode their language, which hangs tantalizingly out of reach. The bright yellow represents the brightest sun, and also rationality that threatens to obscure this connection. It is a painting about the remembrance of childhood, and the secret and personal lives we led that were so formative. I painted the trees as geometric squares first, then applied layers of yellow to occlude them in places, using sandpaper to smooth and also texture the surface.
		Catching Clouds is the view from my studio, laying on my back and looking up on the first fresh Spring day this year. The trees so elegantly catch the clouds, each of the branches and trunks being comprised of twisted primary colors, like yarn from old, brightly colored sweaters. In this painting, I can almost feel the breeze on my face and the freshness of optimism as we dream of a brighter future. I viewed the world from a different perspective, and modeled this painting around that perfection of childhood wonders, the soap bubble, a marvel of art, science and nature.
Sunrise is a further level of abstraction with disconnected pieces that form a non-objective memory. As far as possible, I aimed to express feeling through visual language, and tastes and smells, as I, in my head, walk through memories of stroll through trees, as the sun rises: a happy, optimistic sensation. This memory is placed in time by the language of the colors I use, not only that of sunshine laying across branches in the early morning, but the pinks and reds of childhood sweets, and fruits. A fundamental inspiration for this painting were actually the landscapes by Brueghel, who works catalogues the lives of ‘ordinary’ people and now, to me, seem a most perfect depiction of memory.
	Walk With Me continues my exploration of archetypal myths as they relate to safey/danger and the breaching of boundaries.There are nursery rhymes and stories from medieval Europe of sneaking over the walls at night around the newly-developed walled towns/castles into the unguarded country that surrounded them. In fairytales, it is often in forests that most dreadful and terrifying events happen, the trees being at once threatening, or protecting. In Walk With Me, the trees are comprised of electric colors, shapes and lines that symbolize the myriad dangers that we are exposed to as we leave home, and move through the world. It also depicts the compulsion to explore the wonders and revelations that await us, if we dare to walk the path less travelled.
Suburban Lens brings this series to the present day, in my own journeys. At night, I often walk with my dog through the many park-strewn paths around the suburban town in which I live. Here, the sky is enormous, glowing blues and indigos, edged by low black silhouettes of houses, trees and bridges that are dressed with multi-colored jewel-like lights. Sometimes the trees are lit from behind by late-night floodlights over a soccer match, as if draped in silver. There are few other people out at this time, and I can watch the evening spin, if I gaze upwards. This painting is based around an impressionistic rendition of the results of a long-exposure lens over suburbia. This time, I am staying still, the sky and earth are the ones taking the journey.

Inspiration is Irrelevant

Alison — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:40:53 +0000

Piet Mondrian - Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Grey and Blue - 1921

A very charming student from a local college visited me in my studio a few weeks ago, as they had to choose a living artist whose work they liked on whom to write a paper. She had literally twenty questions to ask me. One of the questions, the last one, stopped me in my tracks because of the response it engendered from me.

The most ordinary little question took me stumbling down a new path of understanding about myself, my art, and how it felt to be an artist.

She asked me, “Where do you get your inspiration?”.

I answered immediately with the first words that materialized, and as I said them I knew they were, for me, completely true: “Inspiration is irrelevant”.

She looked somewhat surprised, so I went on to explain my assertion to her. Each painting I create is a distillation of my experiences of perceiving and existing, they are my answer and reaction to simply being. My creative process requires me to cull and sculpt my possible artworks down to the chosen few that I can achieve in a day/week/month/year/lifetime. Being an artist fulfills every aspect of who I am and I am an artist every second.

Matisse, Joy of Life, 1905-6

There is a section in the book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark where the author describes Nature as writing questions and answers continually in the skies, and stones, and trees and grasses for those who can decode the language.
My ‘inspirational’ or creative process feels like a dialogue between the collection of experiences that comprise myself as well as my immutable core, and the lines, form, colors and light in the natural world.

She speaks, and I answer. I question, she replies.

I have no idea what she has told me or what I have replied on any conscious level, but each painting is a record of our conversation.

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>> Artist Deborah T. Colter has written her response to this post. Please visit her site to read it!<<

>>Artist Roslyn Dames has written about inspiration in response to my post. <<