“I’ve started interrogating the interior space as a chrysalis – a space in its transitional state. The ‘interior’ spaces in my paintings often feel like they have been flooded or like some bacteria has taken over all of the surfaces. The interior spaces become ‘living’ environments that the figures in the paintings are trying operate in. 

I want to breathe a sense of life into my work, but in all its forms -the sense that life gives us is that of both contortion and clarity. I want to remain neutral in showing both polarities; that sometimes the most astounding beauty in the natural world is only possible due to grueling biological processes. I see all the ways these occur in my own being, and it charges forth out of me in these motions of pulling, sagged down currents, the tearing of skin, hypnotic rhythm, density, tapestries that convey complex situations, energy lines, x-rays, symbiotic relationships, horror, fermentation.  

I use the idea of something rotting, breaking down or blooming as a principle or as choreography for my hand when I paint. I want things to feel like they’re moving or changing form. I have this desire that a landscape or objects or places should be able to speak back to you, so I play with the idea that things are changing shape or breaking down. This makes it feel like they’re taking on a new life form or make them seem animated or in some way more tolerable. 

I like layering materials because it gives a claustrophobic feeling of debris that has been accumulating over a long period of time. It’s also a way to convey tensions between subject matters. If I am incisive about that center point that feels like it cannot hold - that it might erupt or dissolve - then it feels like a custodianship to convey it; it’s like the observation concept in quantum theory, that even at the atomic level; existence is only dependent on if it has been witnessed. If I have witnessed it, then perhaps it is my duty to memorialize that it ever even happened. These are subtle intentions that I weave into my work.  

There is a tendency to confine artists into thematic categorization -that oh, perhaps they deal with themes of death, or environments or even identity - this might be necessary, as it provides a sense of security that what we are viewing is comprehensible. I am not sure I will ever be able to communicate all of the nuances in my work, or in others. I think this is why we continue to create - all of us - so we may always offer each other a peek into our own minds, however slight it may be in relaying our absolute nature.  

The colors I work with are chosen before I start with a new series. I’m trying to become more disciplined with sticking to the colors I choose at the beginning. It also helps to develop a plot that will feel more rooted. Colour is humility; especially as human beings only see a fraction of the spectrum of possibility that exists. Colour is, in many ways, the very fabric that makes this entire reality possible; and to an artist - it is the most principal consort in the process of creating. Even the absence of colour, for an artist, is a devotion to colour’s way.  

I am intrigued by other mediums, too. I think the energy to create is distilled - like a panacea before it is alchemized - and it just takes a certain alteration of the tools to tell a story a thousand different ways. I’ve always liked clothing design because it reminds me to play with the idea of a scene sewn together like you would sew together sections of material to sometimes reveal certain parts of the body, some parts obscured through exaggeration, some parts hidden or veiled.  

I’ve started thinking about canvas as a kind of anatomy and when I paint I’m transplanting information and environments onto it. I’m also very into films; they remind you to push narrative and character development in the work, but mostly I love films that have dramatic cinematography.  

It amazes me that we are always creating and shaping - and that no single aspect of the world is really ever passive or static. There is movement and and motion taking place in my body, as it is in yours, and around us -  at all times. And yet there are moments of impossible stillness between our breathing. I wonder about this ebb and flow a lot; the intuitive nature that seems to govern and direct the cosmos. My eyes and hands are one way that this intuitive nature is able to expand. That is really incredible, I think. “ 

Jeanne Gaigher