Great news. My debut show will be held in London during the month of June, at the new Serena Morton space at Canalside, Ladbroke Grove W11. There’s lots of preparation going on. Here to celebrate, is a charcoal I did at atelier school a while back, with a leaf bikini and russet background added this evening on the computer.
Big Nude in a Leaf Bikini – charcoal with computer paint
Chalk and gesso on linen canvas
The Victorian parks of London, planted with exotic species from across the world – ghostly traces of the British Empire in botanical form.
The Ghost in the Park
I finished an iPad painting which took several drafts. Feel slightly bereft now that it’s ‘gone’ from me and onto the ‘paper’.
A painting done on my computer, using a new pen and ink ‘tool’ that I haven’t tried before. And lots of colour, and leaves, of course…
Englishwoman
This is about the representation of women – in the glamour, beauty, film and fashion industries. On a film set, someone might ask ‘have you seen so-and-so? and the reply might be, ‘she’s in make-up’, EG having hair and face done in the make-up department.
It’s a self portrait about how desperate a person might feel inside – sitting in the make-up truck on a shoot, with a team of brilliant people working around their face to produce a polished exterior. It’s ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’ as I haven’t sat in such a place for many years. I took this polaroid last year, scanned it and painted over with computer software.
She’s in Make Up
This is a self portrait from May 2010 – which I’m reviving. Mostly because it makes me laugh, and I feel like cheering myself up. It’s an old photo from back in the day, with discrete digital additions to the hairdo and make-up.
Jenny Caron Hall, Self Portrait
This is a figure painting exercise in oils, of a female nude obviously. An impatient sketch. I photographed it and digitally altered the colour balance to give it a bit of heat. In principle this is similar to what the old painters used to do, centuries ago, when they washed glazes of red over a dried green ground. My favourite bits are the knees, the right hand, and the bench.
Red hair and grape-green eyes like a goat
A self-portrait is a great thing to do when you want to change tack but haven’t found a new subject yet. It’s a very old photo of me in extreme close-up, and I’ve over-painted the hair and eyes. I’m in the forest, as usual.
This is an actor playing Autolycus the peddler/thief in A Winter’s Tale – in a rehearsal room in Clapham, wearing bits of costume including a top hat and eye-liner. It’s a larger than life comic character but also deeply frightening, even in rehearsal. This is now Draft 2 – computer painting over photo of charcoal sketch.
Autolycus the peddler
A few further changes, and voila! a bone white, bleached out beach scene.
bleached bone and driftwood - beach scene
I’m coming up to the end of term at my Atelier school. At that point I will have graduated from my self-designed art school and, though I will always be learning, I will consider myself a fully fledged artist. I’m marking the moment by getting a bunch of pictures framed for the first time, to see what they really look like.
I made this small iPhone painting during a long and fairly arduous journey this week on South West Trains. The image is a bit European, as I am, and acted like a comforter – a kindly aunt or presiding angel for my slightly grim journey.
lady on a train
I couldn’t resist adding brighter colours and pushing the exposure and making this image (from below) more vibrant. I’m in favour of pictures that give off an energy.
More Pop Dancing
I’ve just started my second term of Atelier school classes at Lavender Hill: learning to draw accurately with charcoal and paint in the European ‘chiaroscurro’ tradition. It’s very hard and absolutely exhilarating. Here is my exercise of drawing a plaster cast wrapped in a textile ‘shawl’ under a sharply angled spotlight.
My plaster cast sketch at Lavender Hill Studio
Today our drawing club went on a ‘Plein Air’ trip to sketch in the park in the summer sun. Being sleepy on a Saturday morning, I didn’t pack proper equipment and had to improvise. I was going to use ‘mixed media’ (eye-shadow and lipstick), but then I found a few tubes of acrylic and a half-bald brush in the bottom of my bag. I used a paper bag from the park cafe as my palette and a bottle of mineral water for…water. Back home I photographed it and added some stuff on the computer.
Park Shadows
