I feel grass tickling me underneath my toes. The sky spitters light onto us, I blur my eyes and watch luminous flecks of luscious green, where the sunlight breathes, through leafy veins. We are underneath this tree, you and I and we are calm.
You are asleep in that vanilla way, your cheeks pouty, as your face is relaxed. You are so still and feathery, I have to check you are breathing, as I have done so many times, when you are away from me, in this sleepy cocoon. I feel the faintest float of your exhalation on my fingertips, as your dreams sweetly escape you.
You are so precious. You smiled like her today and my love almost broke in on itself, I was so enthralled.
Your eyes see the world as I do, amazing and to be delved into, with your whole self. You saved me in so many ways when you came. I thought you would be a girl. I didn’t know what to do with you. We were all terrified of you, at first. So small, yet so vast was your presence, that we all stopped in our days and were suspended by you, waiting in your wake, to hold you, love you, for you to love us. Our new King, a gift to be worshipped.
I find myself in awe of you constantly, its like you are a crystallisation of beauty made of all that is honest and good about Us, our histories, and the world, refined into this precious tiny grain of magical being, that is you.
I never understood it before, but I understand it now more than ever, with a fullness that healed me and changed us all.
You are so lucky I think sometimes, you are so loved. My sister, who has been the other half of me my whole life (her words not mine) gave us you. My sister and I are so close, and because of this you are also mine. You are all of ours.
I sang to you when you were in her belly, my sister, so raw, so fragile, so strong, so precious. I was scared of you, I couldn’t see you, but I felt you in my sister’s body, my sister I had grown up with, my sister who was still my big sister.
I loved you before you were here. We all did.
I pick you up after your bath and my hands can wrap around your tiny ribcage, I can feel your warmth, breath and body rising, your tiny heart beating, your swollen belly full. You climb onto me now and rest yourself in my arms, and I inhale your sweet candyfloss curls into me.
You have started to talk and we all think, who is this tiny person in our lives now, telling us where to ‘sit’ and what you want? You absent mindedly twiddle with my favourite necklace, a horse on a gold locket, when you sit with me. You curl and cup it with your tiny hand, and you grace it as I do. You coorie in, and I think one day my heart will break with your touch.
My sister wants me to paint you, I want to paint you, but you are so beautiful in so many ways how could I even begin?
Your eyes are so blue, so deeply blue, raw sapphires, passed down yet paler as if diluted from mine, my dad’s, my granddad’s. Your eyelashes, are downy curls sweeping up broken hearts, your lips are fleshy sweet pink cherries. The back if your head is a swirling of curls topped of with a kiss curl, you have had since birth. Your teeth are so white and new, like tiny polished cut polo mints. You have the best cheeks, they are bulging peaches, set aside a curving button ended nose, that is divine.
The way you look, the way you move, the way you sneak, the way you teeter, the way you dance and flow.
You make me laugh.
The D’Arcy Thomson Museum is one room at the bottom of a staircase, hidden from the world, no windows peak in. Dissected frogs hang in jars, a sleep infinite, baby-face monkey twists serenely in his glass grave. Kept, recorded, remembered. Specimen.
Tattered winged bats lie like a discarded newspaper – the items look like something you would discover yourself in an old disused cupboard or a locked drawer. Everything is set out like evidence of a particularly peculiar crime. Who would collect such things? Take any exhibit and imagine it found out of the context of ‘museum’ and it could and has made for a juicy elaborate tale, all on its own.
And the best possession for me? An object, a creature? A construction or contraption which in itself holds an enormous presence, yet could be easily missed. A chilling, yet heart achingly beautiful specimen. A tortoise, cut open, internal parts removed long ago, except for hip and shoulder bones and a taxidermied head. The shell has been re-attached with a hinge and a hooked latch. A hinge and a latch! I fancy it is a book without words, a thousand stories wide.
I mean, who hasn’t wondered if there really is blood and bone underneath those shells? If actually inside, is a complicated clockwork mechanism or has fancied that a tiny man is in there peddling the tortoise, pressing buttons, pulling strings? Who hasn’t thought of the tortoise, sitting inside his shell (at home) with a cup of tea sitting, skinny and wrinkly on his sofa reading the tortoise news?
Look closer and a more foreboding and sinister tale reveals itself. It is far more unsettling to take it – As it is. There is nothing inside the shell. We can open and close it at will. It is empty. Nothing but shell and bone, heavy with the space of the missing tortoise.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/zoology/
Jennifer Robson When you love someone, their appearance becomes a secondary thing,to who they are and what they do for you and how they make you laugh or feel. And what marks them as different, birthmarks, crinkly smiles, the way they look at you sometimes, are what reinforces the love. So what is all this nonsense about? Do people really need to go to all this effort to attract a mate, like bleaching their teeth for one, and starving themselves in misery when it doesn’t even matter.
Love is irrational. When you feel it, you have no say. That’s why it is completely ridiculous to follow some formula, that makes you look a certain way, when its a completely random specific game anyway. People are not loved because they look beautiful. Think about it, why do you love who you love? What would you do for them? I’m talking about all kinds of love, family and friend and lovers. If you think about how and why you love people, is it too much to believe and expect them to love you in this same way?
So why is the world promoting an ideal and frankly scary photo-shopped look, when the person you love is the one with sleep in their eyes and the one who pumps in their sleep?
Talisman
Your name becomes a Talisman,
A worshipped piece of bone.
A locked surviving strand of hair,
My future, past, my home.
I say it when I’m lonely,
If I’m waiting or I’m sore.
I say it all the time My Love,
My reverence to it’s lore.
My Man,
My Love,
My Sweetie Tin,
My Cotton Lover’s Store.
I was in the courier check it out!!
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Living/Arts-and-Literature/article/12787/outbye-gallery-hosts-first-jen-robson-solo-exhibition.html
Portraiture and Commission work
Commission work can be great to do, I get a lot out of it; meeting people and being challenged to work with them and help them achieve what it is they are after can be very satisfying. I understand how beautiful it can be and how special it is to receive a drawing, because from the minute my nephew was born he was so gorgeous and luscious to look at, I wanted to draw and paint him straight away. A drawing or a painting for me, catches something more of a person, something mysterious and a little magical. When it happens, whilst working on a person it can be the strangest thing. You do something and you are not even sure what you have done, and its like suddenly ‘there they are, that person is on the page and it’s wonderful, because when you think about it its just paint and a paintbrush!
I have had a lot of different commissions, pets, horses and dogs especially, commemorative corporate portraits, families, girlfriends, babies and children. And sometimes people want pictures of themselves, perhaps in a way to remember who they were or celebrate a time when they are at their happiest. Each time I make a commission it is a different learning experience, not only technically but emotionally sometimes, depending on how much of a challenge I have set myself.
What I love about portraiture is, I love skin tones and the way the light hits skin, and how amazing it is to recreate this effect with oil or pencil. The effects of layers of transparent colours reacting to each other as you work on a painting never fails to enthral me. Each time its magical and I learn something new and I think its these epiphanys that keep me doing it. There are so many ways to work, so many marks you can make and slight changes to your methods or mediums can create such wonderful new avenues for your work. For instance using a Costa card to paint with or smudging and blending with your fingers can help add textures and more interesting effects on a painting
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The Process
I sometimes work from photos that people love and try to add my own touch to them, occasionally snapshots people have taken can be amazing because of the moment they have captured. Other times I have made portraits where I would take photos myself, I work hard to create a comfortable environment for sitters to pose for me, and am sensitive to people and enjoy the collaboration and dialogue that goes on between artist and sitter.
I usually take about 100 photos and use them as reference, so I can get a good idea of the form as working from one photo can be deceptive. I sit down with my client and we have a chat about which pose or photo they wish to go for over a coffee. We go through photos I have selected that I think would make a good piece and they choose their favourite. I work in most mediums, from oils, pencil to graphite, watercolour and mixed media. Once all the details are finalised I then get started. Depending on the size and medium it takes from 2 weeks for a drawing to 1 – 6 months to complete an oil painting commission.
If its an oil work, I tend to prefer working on board these days, as it has a better bite and flatter surface to draw line on and I use a lovely gesso primer which is a glorious white fresh surface to work on. I start by drawing straight onto the primed board with oil paint or dependin
g how I am approaching the painting I draw first in charcoal as its east to rub off if you make mistakes.
I block in the main dark areas with an umber/sienna mix and then I get straight into blocking in colours. I tend to exaggerate from the photo the intensity of colour and play around with contrasts, I like the eyes to really stand out as I feel that’s where you communicate most feeling, and so I usually make sure when I am choosing photographs that there is a twinkle in the eye.
Once I have the drawing right its very exciting after that, because I can get right into playing with colour. Working with portraiture can be very different form my own work, due to the limitations placed because of the need to get things right in order for a portrait to look like someone. In the same way it can all go so right by doing something different and being bold and daring – it can also go so very wrong!! I have had portraits with giant noses, cauliflower ears ( as my dad called it) and one missing eyebrow because I made such a mistake I had to wipe the whole eyebrow off and start again! It’s funny now but it’s really not at the time…!!
I need to keep an eye on myself because occasionally you can get carried away or lose concentration and if you work too long on a piece you can overwork it to the point you lose the original drawing. This can be a disaster and add a lot of extra time and stress to the work. I did a commission last year of three children and this happened with one of the pieces of which two of the children took me the estimated amount of hours I thought it would take (which was fab!) but the other one took me triple the time. Very stressful!! But I learned a hard lesson, so it was good in the end.
So, you can understand how wonderful the feeling is when I have completed a commission – after all that. It is like I have won and have beaten it! And there is nothing like the feeling after you have been through all that and your client walks in and starts crying (because they love it of course!!) When you see a person’s face when they walk in and see it, it makes it all worthwhile, it’s fantastic and its lovely to be part of making something that is so meaningful and important to them. It’s just lovely.
What a beautiful blue sky with white cloud sunny day! It just makes me feel so hopeful and like anything is possible. Sunlight is streaming through my studio window alighting on my work, casting incredible shadows on my horses and hares in my little sets. I love how my new work interacts with its surroundings like this, that’s the beauty of sculpture! The whole feel of a piece can change when you literally – see it in a different light. The sunlight sparkles and twinkles little glitter spots all over my studio. Just fabulous! I worked on my Doll’s House yesterday and have made lots of headway as to where it is going and what it is all about. It came from an original sketchbook idea I had 3years ago, after I read in a symbolism book that the house is often used as a representative symbol of the psyche, with the levels representing depths of the consciousness. The roof is said to connect to a higher consciousness, like a transmitter as such. So immediately I thought about the house I shared with my beloved flatmates at Uni in Thomson street in Dundee. It’s a three-tiered old house with high ceilings, bay windows, cornices, and a twisting staircase. The attic rooms are fabulous with slanted ceilings and you could even sit out on the roof and enjoy sunny Dundee with a view of the Tay in the summer. And way down below there was a cupboard under the stairs, and a fireplace in my room and the living room, we even had an old piano that a neighbour was throwing out the day we moved in. These are all items that are making appearances in my work and in my Doll’s House. It was my first place away from home, and it became a haven for me and I loved it. This house and the feelings and memories attached to it, became the inspiration for lots of my new work. You can see the sketch original here. It was strange but even then, I knew this sketch was never going to work as a painting in the way I use to work. Its this house that I made my own, my first space, my first taste of adding to something and making it my own. I love the poet Pable Neruda, and I was given this beautiful book which has images of his houses, and I was moving into my current house at the time, (another bay-windowed old house where sunlight streams in throuhgout the day). Neruda had quite a few houses which he kept extending them, adding extra extensions and I loved this idea that a house could be organic, it was growing to fit him. He also had a houseful of collected things, he loved, that inspired him. One in particular was a saddled tin horse statue from a local shop, which he used to pass on his way to school every day as a child. He would stroke its nose every day and later in life the owner eventually sold it to him for a great price. He also used to collect the ladies from the front of ships, a houseful of them tied to and rigged to beams. Much of his poetry involved women and mermaids and he was obsessed with the Sea) and boats in bottles too. Even the functional things he owned like tables and chairs were all gorgeous wood, and thoughtfully chosen, all reflective of his personality. I’d never thought of a house this way before, not just a place to live, but a place to feel alive. Here is a poem Pablo wrote about ships in bottles and I think it is just genius. I know that tiny carpenters went in through your delicate throat, flew in on bees. I know that flies brought on their backs tools, nails, planks, tiny ropes, and so inside the bottle a perfect ship took shape: its hull the nub of its beauty, raising its pin-sized masts… It was after seeing this book, I though I wanted to surround myself with things I loved to look at and then I understood why people buy art, and want it around them. My studio is filled with collected things, some things make it into a piece of artwork, but others I keep as little tokens, talismans to remind me and inspire. I would never give up my favourite horse, which sits on my window beside a dried bunch of my favourite flowers (hydranga) picked from my Granda’s garden before he had to give up his plot and sell his house. These things are mine and more valuable to me than anything gold or bought new. My Granda died last week and I was given a locket that my Granny Robson, who has also passed away, used to wear. The locket I was comforted and surprised to find has a swallow on the front. It also has a photo of my Granda in it.
Day 1million ( feels like it!)
Haven’t had a minute to write for a while, due to having to do business stuff (OUCH!) and organise promotion for the show. Been crazy panicking I won’t have enough work and then panicking I’ll have too much!! Am also eating way too much chocolate – is it ok to have desert after breakfast?!
Wrote a whole amazing blog last week and really made headway on what I am doing, only to navigate away from page by accident…Oops!!! So now I am out of the huff with the blog, here goes.
Things are looking very exciting in my studio and I can visualise the show now. .
I got THE MOST AMAZING spice Wrack form Tayside recyclers for £3 last week and I swear it was meant for me. It is two shelved white-washed wood with lace fretwork and my objects look so beautiful on it, it is perfect. It occurs to me that the time I spend looking around charity shops and going to my favourite haunts in Dundee to inspire me is so important, more than I realised.
I spent so many years misunderstanding that art doesn’t just spring out of nothing. Expecting amazing pieces of art to come out without putting anything in. I now look, I mean really look everywhere I go. I see secret doorways to other worlds whenever I pass a blue painted door. I look at the architecture on my way to the studio every day and love all the old half torn down or disused buildings near Verdant Works and my studio. This is where many of the City’s original Jute Mills and factory’s were and as a result these buildings have been renovated and expanded on, but you can still see where the original buildings were in places. This sparks a whole world of stories in my imagination, I love the bricked up windows and Doors all overgrown with shrubbery, makes me think of the Secret garden.
In particular I also love the old Dundee Chamber of Commerce building. It is like some medieval bell tower from Notre Damme, it even has gargoyles! In Dundee! I love this idea of finding stories everywhere, it is a fundamental element of the way I used to play when I was young. I still get the same feelings when I find a spice wrack or a pair of Gold Pheasant salt and pepper shakers (their heads come off and rotate!!) at the recyclers. At the studios at WASPS if someone leaves something unwanted outside their door this can be heaven for me, I love the idea of someone’s rubbish is another’s treasure.
I want to show my inspiration in the show, so people can relate, because I find it all so amazing and this is partly why I make it because I am saying ‘Look and see…I am inviting you to see the world through my eyes and hopefully to see your world in a new light too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/scotlandonfilm/media_clips/clip_display.shtml?topic=rural&subtopic=fishing_farming&clip_name=eriskay_weaving_women_v&media_type=video&popup=yes
