VACMA: Jeanne Rose

Jeanne Rose says her work is “an expression of my impression of the sky and landscapes of Orkney punctuated with the work of people in the past.”

“I am heavily influenced by the marks, rocks and way of life of the Neolithic world, particularly at the Ness of Brodgar and the Ring of Brodgar - I have been walking the Ring of Brodgar daily for nearly a year.”

She says she has in the past been ‘timid’ to work in mixed media.

But her 2020-21 VACMA grant helped her overcome and embrace the technical challenges:

“The grant gave me clear parameters and a reason to achieve new goals.

“The recognition of my work that the grant implies makes my ‘artist self’ honest and curious.

“It’s given me safety of funds that I can dedicate to explore.

“I spent July at the Ness painting in a rather safe way with some minor explorations.  But by the last week at the Ness, I was fully explosive using larger canvas and finally integrated lots more materials, making marks on the canvas that were unlike any I had done before. 

“The energy I found was what I had begun to find in the print studio with my mentor, Diana Leslie. 

“It gave me confidence when sitting on the edge of the excavated trenches at the Ness of Brodgar to pick up paint, charcoal, graphite and set it out where I thought it was important to put it.  I worked fairly fast and straight onto the canvas.

“In the past I would vary my choice of material and paint with watercolour, oil, oil pastel, and with paper, canvas and printmaking. - sometimes using the colours of the rainbow in my work, other times I limit my colours and rely more on mark making. I find that using different media influences my technique and what I discover in printmaking might give life to a different approach with oil paint and canvas.

“When painting on canvas, I mainly use oil sticks that I blend after applying them in a free crayon type manner. When I paint plein air, I use small brushes and tube oils on mostly canvas board that I can hold in my hand.

“But I had never put all this together like I have done at my summer art residency at the Ness of Brodgar – my VACMA grant gave me the space and support I needed to embrace the challenge head on.”