All my work begins in front of the subject, whether in the urban landscape or the countryside. I allow my eyes to relax and my thoughts to absorb what is around me so that from the initial sketch I make a response to my surroundings. Back in my studio I interpret my sketches into paintings that once started often dictate changes and further responses to colour and shapes that I recollect from my original interpretation. Some of my work is intimate, some giving depth in space and air. The density of colour, it’s transparency or opacity, the layers that build up the painting are designed to add richness to forms within the flatness of the canvas or paper.
My work is an ongoing journey. So far the end is not in sight! The paintings have an ‘essential reality’ in their non figurative execution hopefully giving an immediate contact with the viewer. All my pictures are the result of personal experience and whatever reorganisation of the subject has undergone in the process of painting, something of the colours and shapes I originally saw always remain. Paint represents space and makes it ‘actual’. I do not start with the idea, but with the experience. My source is from the ‘sensation’ of the place. The summarised compositions never entirely relinquish specific subject matter whether in cities, sea or landscape, though they exercise freedom of paint handling of an abstract nature.
I believe the artist should provide a stimulating point of departure for thought and feeling by giving a strong image to which people can respond by emphasising, eliminating and clarifying to allow others a fresh viewpoint. The paintings are about reality without resorting to imitation.’
I want to create personally meaningful work, working in oils, pastel and water based media in my studio from previously made sketches, except when commissions take me elsewhere.
-- Jean Noble
Jean exhibits regularly in the UK, mostly in the South of England. Her work is in private collections both in the UK and Internationally.