&Gallery is pleased to introduce Artist Focus Week 4.
The Artist Focus series consists of online viewing rooms of a selection of artworks
This week, &Gallery present works by Jonathan Barber, Jeffrey Cortland-Jones, Joan Doerr, Liz Douglas, Jai Llewellyn, Ivan De Menis and JFK Turner
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Jonathan Barber
Jonathan Barber graduated from the School of Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 2008.
Based in Edinburgh, he creates atmospheric abstracted work based around light, darkness, shape, movement and presence.
His recent work consists of large scale abstract landscapes on canvas and board alongside smaller more intricate studies on paper. His developed aesthetic is made up of dark weighty tones bringing depth and distance to the canvas. Accents of colour are skilfully used as compositional tools to entice the viewer to weave through layers and perspective
Click here for more information about the Artist -
Joan Doerr
Joan Doerr is a Scottish abstract painter living in Edinburgh. Joan has exhibited widely across the UK, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
Joan’s work is abstract but the source material is often derived from her immediate surroundings - simply walking around the beautiful city of Edinburgh has given Joan countless creative ideas. She is fascinated as well by the visual impact of the elements on the environment - the weathering’s, surfaces and atmospheres are all part of her subject matter. She has also spent many hours drawing and observing plant forms at the Botanic garden and her interpretation of those images will frequently find their way into the paintings.
Joan admires the spontaneity and unselfconscious creativity of young children’s drawings. Working intuitively and instinctively, often applying layers of paint and drawing until she is satisfied with the depth and atmosphere of the artwork.Joan Doerr will be the subject of the first solo exhibition presented by the &Gallery this year. We are looking forward to being able to announce a date.
Click here for more information about the Artist -
Liz Douglas
Liz Douglas lives and work in the Scottish Borders. She studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art, completing her postgraduate Masters in Fine Art, Painting in 1993.
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Her work, which is influenced by specific landscapes, memory, poetry, and music has developed from direct painting of the landscape to a more sensory approach, creating visual environments using pigments, line, print and contemporary media.
Her work reflects her dialogue with the natural world and the element of unpredictability that exists. She also has a wish to explore these contradictions, using the visible and invisible element in the landscape as metaphor.
The research processes she uses involves collaborating with scientists and environmentalists which deepens her knowledge of the natural world, and its contradictions. She investigates microscopic elements using a scanning electron microscope to reveal structures and forms from graptolite fossils, alpine plants, tree and plant pollen material. -
Jeffrey Cortland Jones
Jeffrey Cortland Jones received a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning and a Bachelors of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, both in Painting and Drawing.
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Jeffrey is a Professor of Art at the University of Dayton where he heads the Painting program. -
Jai Llewellyn
Jai Llewellyn‘s paintings are about the process of mark making, the history of a line seen through an abstract picture of the future. Llewellyn works between painting and printmaking with no hierarchy, each discipline informs the other, both focusing on the relationships and juxtapositions of old and new, growth and decay, construction and deconstruction.
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Llewellyn works intuitively and often begins by recycling or re-appropriating existing images – drawings, etchings and prints from old books – on which he layers his compositions with marks, lines, giving us, the viewer, a peek into the history of his process, the space to see the artist in action. As a result of the interaction between print and paint Llewellyn‘s work is a wonderfully graphic abstract expression that is both pensive and evocative. -
Ivan De Menis
Italian artist Ivan De Menis studied in the institute of Art in Vittorio Veneto and the Venice Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in the countryside of North Italy, close to Treviso.
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The wooden panels by Ivan De Menis are only apparently simple; actually they encapsulate complex systems and thoughts. In his more recent works, for which he uses polystyrene and airball, it is a process that reveals the most intimate part of the work, as if he wanted to pull the viewer into the beating heart of what is happening before his eyes. The materials are usually used for packaging but here they become protagonists. Content and container are identified. -
JFK Turner
JFK Turner’s work is concerned with the unnoticed ephemeral elements of everyday life; found objects, marks, stains and the natural effect of time. The objects Turner collects from the street form the basis of the work.
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The paintings are not abstract – they are based on something from the real world – for example a rubber band, a screwed-up piece of paper, or a flap on a cardboard box. These are non-objects, just the remnants of life.
The works are closer to objects than traditional paintings. If paint is used it is house hold paint that is poured, smeared and allowed to congeal and crack – like spilt paint on a pavement. In addition to paint Turner uses found materials – wax, plaster, photographs, paper, discarded books and clothes. Working on wood allows the surface to be attacked by scratching, sanding and stabbing. This adds to the works physical quality – like a collagraph printing plate or a religious icon.
Turner takes objects and elements from the real world, combines them together to create another object. The ordinary becomes unusual and other.
