Chantal Joffe is an Artist born in Vermont USA but grew up and continues to work in London. She depicts mainly women and children from friends to fashion figures. Her works are predominantly large in scale but sometimes very small. Using broad, large, fluid brush strokes the individuals are re-animated occasionally disarming the viewer. I think the scale may have a part to play in this but equally the expression of her figures even on small scale hold our attention. Her energy can be seen in the way she paints and her juxtaposition of colour and pattern.
Her Recent Exhibition of works: At the Seaside for the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings depicts larger than life paintings of friends on tall canvases alongside more petite compositions of children. Sparing us precise detail, instead she concentrates on the layers of paint. Despite lashings of bright hues and her resistance to give away too much of a narrative, her faces all offer something haunting underneath the character’s surface. She paints in an unflattering light, presenting an awkwardness about each character at odds with the jolly hues and patterns.
After watching an interview about the exhibition (click here), it was interesting to hear how Joffe uses different base layers of colour to give a better ground to work on. She speaks of white being ‘cold’ and sometimes using pink or apple green underneath skin tones. Looking at the painting above we can see how Joffe has left an outline of the apple green around the figure perhaps to highlight it. I have decided to use cadmium red mixed with guesso as a ground for my next canvas. I had not intended for such an intense pink but I started off with too much cadmium so I continued adding white to bring the saturation down.
