Y GRÅ´P CYMREIG THE WELSH GROUP
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Jess Woodrow
Artist's statement:
"Painting for me involves a lot of watching and waiting, hoping it will work out and become something that will make me feel calm and at peace with the world. The dystopian place doesn't interest me, but ambiguity does, and being playful with space.
Until recently I called myself a landscape painter, but I realised that this was misleading. Everything is landscape. I like a painting to have aspects of landscape and still life. The object placed in a space in an integrated surface.
My painting is about integrating the materials with the subject so they feel like they are the same thing. A kind of dance between mark and meaning.
I'm with Susan Sontag, when she talked about being against interpretation of art. A painting must hold you in a kind of enchanted moment when your attention doesn't wander. A moment before grammar kicks in.
My current work has involved going back to earlier days when it was more about still life and interiors. Now I want to bring everything together, inside and outside. When I was a student I was obsessed with Morandi, looking to his later work where landscape seemed to merge with the still life, and all sense of scale was lost.
I never want to forget that a painting is an object, When you place it in a space, on a wall, then that space is changed. A painting must change how you relate to the space around it, and how you feel in that space."
Born: Malverns, Worcestershire, England.
Lives: Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales.
Education:
MA - Bath College of Art + Design (2008 - distinction) Fine Art (pg dip) - University of Wales (Cardiff).
BA(Hons) Fine Art - Howard Gardens, Cardiff. (1990)
Diploma in Foundation studies - Weston-super-Mare College of Art.
Selected exhibitions:
2023 Concentric Group Show - West Wharf Gallery, Cardiff.
2023 RCA Open, Conwy.
Beep painting prize 2022, Elysium, Swansea.
2022 'Mad shadows Mute ghosts'. Curated by Jess Woodrow: Group show with Jacqueline Alkema, Rosie McLachlan, Sophie Woodrow, Flora McLachlan, Oriel Q, Narberth Pembrokeshire.
2022 'Walking in Two Worlds', group show. Curated by Jonathan Powell, Steph Goodger, Julian Rowe. Volcano, Swansea (Elysium).
2022 'Hibernation', group show with work created in lockdown. Curated by David Morgan Davies. Abergavenny Art Shop and Chapel gallery.
2022 Drawing. Members show. Oriel Q, Narberth.
2021 Aspects of Landscape - 3 artists. Oriel Q, Narberth. Curated by Harriet Addyman.
2021 'Walking in Two Worlds'. Curated by Jonathan Powell, Steph Goodger and Julian Rowe. Oceans Apart Gallery, Salford and Oriel Caernarfon, Gwynedd.
2016 'The Sound of Water', solo show. Oriel Q, Narberth, Pembrokeshire.
2015 Abergavenny art shop and Chapel gallery - summer show.
2015 '10 Artists from Bristol and London', Searchers Contemporary, Bristol.
2013 'Objects of Desire'. Searchers Contemporary, Bristol.
2010 Open Painting - A survey of contemporary painting. RWA Bristol.
2006/8 I exhibited with West Wales Art centre Fishguard.