Jessica Chapman
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
Here is a series of revolving scenes: glimpses of emotional microcosms, evocative of fin de siècle femininity. Jessica Chapman amplifies the tactile effect of pastel and charcoal in a way perfectly suited to these images’ interiority. It’s interesting how she uses the textures of the materials to give an eroded effect. In their anatomic acuity and aqueous emotional environment they recall the vivid insight of Egon Schiele. In ‘Form’ we get that spliced dual experience of looking at a body and feeling to be one, experiences which tend to merge with as well as to contrast each other. The figure in this work is suggestive of a silhouette, a marionette… In ‘Veiled’, is it a head of hair that trails across the surface of the work, or is it an atmosphere? The black locks expand into the pure materiality of charcoal. The small scale of these works contribute to their enclosed visuals: the women unravel in solitude’s universe. They are unclothed, and one returns to the hair as adornment and identity, the elucidating focal point of the images.
Artist Statement
I am a woman, a painter, and a poet. I have had an artist practice for most of my adult life, first in my native America and since the mid-1990s in the UK. I live with my three children in a rural part of East Sussex. Access to nature is essential for me, and I go for daily walks. Forms, colours, and behaviours observed in plants and animals often make their way into my creative practice. Transformations fascinate me, and I explore these in both my painting and poetry.
A few years ago, changes to my status and personal life overturned my view of myself and took my artistic practice in a new direction. Importantly, time spent in the studio took on a new dimension. Drawing and painting became me finding out who I am, once ridden of roles assigned to me by society. I started to reinvent myself in characters on the canvas. The first step in exploring my own existence was to recognize my own presence, my own body. I use mirrors for this or memory. I paint myself like my most significant influence – Henri Matisse – painted nudes at the peak of Modernism, with the difference that I am both artist and subject. I rely on a mirror leaning against the wall, sketching with one eye in the mirror and the other on the paper. The characters that I encounter in my paintings are like sisters; I like them in all their formats and with all their flaws!
For visual effects, I look to modern masters. All men. Matisse, Picasso, Klimt, and Munch, to mention the most obvious. Conceptually and emotionally, I take inspiration from female artists who have the courage to demonstrate vulnerability. I aim to do the same in my own work l, especially in my drawings of female nudes and self-portraiture. Beauty is complex and sometimes heightened when seen in the context of openness or even aggression.
I align with feminism but don't think of myself as a feminist artist. I don't explore themes unique to women or a commentary on gender equality. My concerns may have arisen from the circumstances of being a woman, but were it not for the patriarchy that we operate within, these concerns may have applied to someone else. I am interested in manifestations of transformations because I have been compromised like many other women. We are compromised by the male gaze, and in my artistic practice, I take control over the gaze that defines me.
Solo Exhibitions
(2023) Coming out of The Doll House, The Fitzrovia Gallery, Fitzrovia
Group Exhibitions
(2023) Seventeen, Bomb Factory, Marylebone London
(2023) Londsdale Road, Drifters, Queens Park
(2023) Visual poetry, View Gallery, Bristol
(2022) Drifters residents, Drifters Gallery, Queens Park London