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Artwave open house -
Jessica Zoob (continued...)
"Sometimes something happens by accident, and I’ll
push on with that.” Sometimes she paints, sometimes
she scratches away. “It’s like when you peel off
wallpaper and find something beautiful underneath.”
She shows me a work she’s just finished after four years,
and incredible multi-layered canvas full of different textures.
I ask her how she knows it’s finished. “You just
know,” she says, “like you know when a camera
comes into focus.”
She paints at a prolific rate, producing 10-35 frames, four
times a year, for exhibitions, mainly in London and Lewes.
She only started painting in 2000, and is now collected worldwide.
She was a theatre designer, but decided to give up because
it didn’t leave enough time for her family. She is pretty
much self-taught. “I forwent all that theory and angst,”
she says. “I don’t know that world, because I
never went through it.” She loves the way children paint
‘before they get that adult self judgment’, something
she admits she can’t completely avoid. I’m amazed
at the lack of darkness in her work, then she shows me some
of the stuff she did in London. Where there is light there
was darkness. Thick swathes of black with colours peeping
out beneath, like a hellish tartan. “I used to do more
geometric lines and grids,” she says. “This one’s
about nature trying to make itself heard in the city. Your
environment always filters through you into your work.”
You feel she made the right move, coming to Lewes. If you
go to one open house, go to this one. AL |
