Jacqueline Burrage – portfolio
Contact the artist
https://www.artweeks.org/p/jacqueline-burrage
07702 328714
Jacqueline[at]hindfarm.com
Exhibition information
I work mainly in oils, but also in gouache and acrylic. My work is not about documenting reality, it is more about sensation and the feelings that what I see before me reflect in my mind. My work is influenced by where I have been before and past experiences, travel and loves. It is primarily a celebration of colour and the effect that it has on our mood; the feelings and sensations that colour can trigger. There is a very close link between colour and music and music always influences my paintings. Music is an invisible art form, but it is there in your head and in your mind and what my art reflects is the colour, rhythm and music going through my head when I paint. I play piano and violin and I think it is the interplay between colour and sound that comes out in my work; when I paint I feel that there is a keyboard of colour and that tones and colours are either “in tune”or “in key” or not. I relate very much to the Jazz musician Miles davis who said “A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear”. I have always loved the music of the French impressionist artists such as Debussy and Faure and it is that feeling of connection to something else, a sensation, a mood, that my work is about. I am not interested in realistic representation; we have cameras for that. Art is about reflecting our view of the world and finding our place within it and that is what drives me to paint. My work is inspired by my love of the countryside and many of my paintings are of local scenes. I walk and ride a lot in the countryside and if I see something that I love, I will take a photograph and later produce something on paper or canvas, while the image is fresh in my mind. It might be something that has caught my eye or an object or animal that has triggered a train of thought, although once I start to paint, I am not really looking at anything; what I am painting is coming from my imagination. I am not interested in detail or accurate representation of my subject, more in conveying what I feel; as people, we don’t see in one colour or in a single frame like a photographic image, what we see around us is filtered and coloured by past emotions and experiences.
My painting style is expressive and spontaneous; it is not neat and traditional. I am told it is full of energy and movement. It is quirky and the scenes depicted are local and personal to me. I can draw in detail and I trained in Life Drawing but somehow something sensible and ordered and flat in colour just doesn’t express what I want to put across in my work. When I look back at my paintings from 25 years ago, they were very different; very traditional and ordered, but something changed when I had my daughter 23 years ago; I blame her for the pink in my work!! It’s something in the moment that I am feeling; my paintings are generally completed in one sitting “alla prima” in a wave of energy, although some paintings I will carry on adding layers to and come back to for months.
Artist information
I have always painted or drawn; originally in pencils or charcoal and more recently in watercolour, gouache, acrylics and oils. I am mostly self taught but I studied Life Drawing at the Heatherley School of Art in London and I have attended courses run by local artists such as Camilla Shelley and Neil Drury. I am trained as a Translator and Interpreter and have a love of languages, sound and music; I play violin in Chiltern Edge Orchestra and I think it is the interplay between colour and sound that comes out in my work. It’s that connection to sound and the energy and movement of music and rhythm that I am looking to express and that I feel when I paint.
My work takes inspiration from the Early Italian Renaissance painters (although I am not religious at all), who used bright colours to express religious devotion and from our very own Stanley Spencer, from Cookham, Berkshire, who used bright images and religious themes and compositions to transform the English countryside into an imaginative and visionary landscape. I have also been very influenced by the Scottish Colourists championed in the Fleming Exhibition; particularly Samuel Peploe and Francis Cadell, but also by post impressionist artists such as Henri Matisse and Andre Derain.
Jacqueline Burrage
