Balancing intuition and meticulous planning Jane Grocott composes work that is both trivial and consequential. Her painting inquiry is driven by procedures of determining how many gestures are needed to activate a painting and what sorts of relationships are cultivated between different applications of paint.
Grocott paints from a collection of her own impromptu cellphone photos, 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 the image. Representative aspects are revealed through interruptions in layers and patterns leaving forms ambiguous and thereby decelerating the viewer’s perception of the painting. She is studying a visual language which emphasizes the application of paint rather than the exact rendering of a figure. The painting is a response to the composition in the image rather than an example of it.
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.
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