‘I am a Stuckist artist’ - Jane Kelly
June 15, 2009 by Quigley · Leave a Comment
Soon to exhibit at the Cristus Gallery, Jane Kelly talks about her art, her background and her current projects.
‘I am a Stuckist artist, that is I joined a group of painters, now world wide, who believe that painting is about some skill and a lot of passion, and the ability to use paper, pencil and paint rather than sump oil and dead animals.
In 2000 I exhibited a portrait of Ken Livingstone being tried as a criminal, in the Royal Academy Summer Show, which sold for £1,000. In 2004 I exhibited in The Stuckists Punk Victorian, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and sold a painting for several thousand pounds (my best sale yet!) to a commissioner from the EU. It now lives in his home in Luxembourg.
This painting has a dramatic effect on my life; to make it I took a photo from the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine, of a typical Daily Mail family, took out the benevolent Dad and replaced him with Myra Hindley. I wanted to see what she would look like in such a quintessential family group.
I was at the time a staff writer for the Daily Mail and I had been there for fifteen years, drawing a substantial salary. I was promptly fired, and the story, and the painting, made the front page of The Guardian.
Unlike the Mail, which divides people into respectable and monsters, I am fascinated by the nature of evil. I attribute much human catastrophe to problems in early childhood and within families. I like to project my ideas backwards to look at the past and ask: What if?
For instance, the Roman emperors almost all had abusive, chaotic childhoods. Hitler could only feel intimacy and trust with animals, not people. Like Myra they projected their inner torment outward with terrible results. I like to imagine them in different situations with all the monster stripped away.
I am also currently working on some religious paintings, to see if that kind of narrative is possible in this secular age without becoming sentimental or mawkish.
It is almost impossible to paint religious figures convincingly. My painting, ‘In the Juvesence of the year came Christ the tiger, shows christ, as a tiger, being mocked by TV celebs, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, and by the pusillanimous Archbishop of Canterbury.
I am also working on some themes from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, linking them to my own life as a lone woman, a woman who still misses the salary and the lifestyle she had on the Daily Mail! On the other hand I am proud to pauper myself and paint.
I also enjoy painting with purely painterly ideas: nudes, still life, landscapes, seascapes. I relish oil paint - nothing can top it.’
