Balancing intuition and meticulous planning Jane Grocott composes work that is both coincidental and consequential. Her painting inquiry is driven by procedures of determining how many gestures are needed to activate a painting and the relationships that are cultivated through different applications of paint. She is investigating a layered idea of looking through one plain to another by working against the decorative towards a complex imagery that only initially appears optimistic.
Grocott paints from a collection of her own impromptu cellphone photography, images found on social media and a mix of contemporary painting references. These images act as foundations from which abstraction emerges as she determines when to represent or misrepresent the elements of an image. Figures are suggested through little cues plotted across the canvas and revealed through interruptions in layers and patterns. There is often a doubling or mirroring of the subject, taking the viewer from left to right or front to back, decelerating their interpretation. She is studying multiple languages of painting at once, repeating, emphasizing or contradicting certain vocabularies; enacting trials by which a painting is resolved.
A key part of her practice centres around embracing complexity and exploring the tension of in-betweens; between figuration and abstraction, control versus abandon, and presence of form over absence. Grocott sees painting as a practice of learning the same lesson over and over again, exhausting every possibility before moving on. Never reaching the root of the problem, she is constantly digging for resolution, only to uncover more questions. Her practice is sustained by the endless task of absorbing the constant flow of visual information and discovering new ways of translating it through paint. Ultimately she is painting to know, to untangle thoughts and the current condition.
Jane Grocott lives and works on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Contact
janegrocott5@gmail.com