Artospective: Paintings by Jane Clatworthy from Chichester, UK.

John - Painting by Jane Clatworthy from Chichester, UK.

An Interview with Jane Clatworthy.

Who and from where are you?

I was born in the north of England but was raised in Zimbabwe. I have spent most of my adult life in South Africa. In 2009 we moved to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It was there I rediscovered my love of art and creating. I now live in Chichester in the UK.

How you got into this?

I was always a prolific drawer as a child; I was never without a pencil or paper, and in fact up until my teenage years hoped to go to art school. When I was 18, ‘Life', as it does sometimes, intervened and for the next 25 years took an entirely different trajectory to the one I envisaged. Sadly one that didn’t include the art world.

Whilst living in the BVI I showed an artist friend the paint brushes I had been collecting my whole life, even though I never painted (I suspect the Muse had been whispering in my ear for a long time). The friend encouraged me to actually give painting a try, and then by amazing coincidence, an American artist whose colourful work I really loved (Caroline Jasper), was suddenly going to be holding a workshop on a next door island. It was an opportunity (and a message) I couldn’t ignore. Whilst I was on the workshop, I realised that painting was what I should have been doing all along and now I feel I have a lot of lost time to make up. After a few years of teaching myself, the thought of art school being a possibility, even at the age of 48, started to cross my mind, though I was unsure and nervous. I was still working up the courage to apply to art school when on a trip to London I visited the National Portrait Gallery. Whilst stood in front of Rembrandt’s “Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph” I was, unashamedly, moved to tears by the compassion with which Rembrandt had captured the trembling moment. Being so moved by that painting made me realise that all I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to paint, so I immediately left the gallery, hopped on a bus and went to visit The Heatherley School of Fine Art.

In 2014 I was accepted at Heatherleys to do a Portrait Diploma. In 2015 we moved to the UK so I could start the course. I graduate in July this year.

What is your driving force?

The sensual pleasure of trying to turn paint into flesh; the journey of exploration; the beauty of the human body; my love of humanity and our common desire for connection to other souls. We all in some way want to be ‘seen’, both the artist and the sitter. I feel the tale of our lives, the deep emotion we often try to hide, flickers across our faces and our bodies all the time. Our life experience is held within our posture, the way our muscles bunch and stretch, the way our bones settle under the weight of our lives, the amazing colours of our flesh and the intricate contour lines we can trace in our skin. To be able to capture our human beauty and our human experience in paint, with empathy and compassion, will probably be a driving force my whole life.

What kind of work you do and why?

I use oil paint on canvas, linen and board. I love to use the palette knife as well as the brush and I’m striving to get the paint to be thicker and more sculptural with each new painting I do. Whilst I feel I’m still at the beginning of my explorations in paint and art, I can say I’m both a portrait painter reaching for a fleeting emotion and a figurative artist with a particular interest in the beauty of the male body. There is perhaps a perception that the male body is not as visually pleasing as the the soft, rounded contours of a woman’s body, yet I feel the dynamic and powerful structure of the masculine is an equally valid expression of beauty, sensuality and vulnerability. Despite huge strides in the art world there are so few exhibitions that include the male nude; an element of taboo still lingers. I’m interested in pushing back against this reluctance so I’m turning my female gaze towards the male body in order to celebrate the beauty I see. Some may find it confrontational and perhaps offensive, but art should not always serve to comfort, sometimes it works best when it forces you to look at things a little differently and perhaps, for a moment, cause you to step into another’s experience. In this case, a woman looking uncensored and unashamedly, at a man.