self-portrait

ON A HOT HOT AFTERNOON

Posted by Jane Wheeler

acrylic and oil on collaged canvas, 61 x 61 cm

The wonderful Elizabeth Peyton book of portraits, and the tape-measure snake – always there, and various other clutter, in front of the desk and the lamp and the old abstract diptych, and myself in a rather Egyptian pose lying on the sofa on a hot afternoon. Originally painted just after the swan book one, but given a going over more recently with palette knife. The title does refer to D H Lawrence’s poem, The Snake, and also, sneakily, to Andrew Cranston’s snake paintings …..

I wish I could paint as nonchalantly as Peyton does.

ON THE KELIM SOFA

Posted by Jane Wheeler

 

oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 50 x 50 cm

I have at last heeded the advice of my dear friend Daphne Wright, who did the MFA at Northumbria with me back in 1990, to go back to where I was in the 90’s with my painting, to the self portrait. Suddenly, on seeing Aubrey Levinthall’s paintings at Ingleby gallery, I got a clue as to where I could go with this. I had already made a start with my painting Waiting for Bonnard

and of course Bonnard’s almost invisible figures, usually Marta his wife, in his interiors, are one way of doing this. Here the recumbent figure is merely hard to read at first amongst the busyness of cushion, the patterned rug and blanket.