Madeleine Jarvis 

Painting is my primary artistic language, and like a language it has different dialects and ways of communication. Exploring these different visual techniques is core to my practice. I like to think of it as, thinking through the medium, the paint leads me just as much as I guide it. The paintings lay out an autobiographical narrative, working from old photographs that document my family history, all of which were taken on film cameras. The film photographs are evocative of a certain time, but they equally have a timeless quality that speaks of the past. There is something in the act of painting these images, in using marks to express my relationship to the images, which balances between a clinical and honest rendering and an almost idealised reimagining of the past.

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Communicating through spaces, the places that people inhabit is the core of my practice. The spaces that anticipate human figures and presence through interior and private rendering of domestic environments. The spaces speak of nostalgia, and a longing for moments past. They are portraits without people, and the lack of the figure allows the viewer to bring themselves into the painting.

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Recently the concept of interruption has found its way into my work. I find that memory lacks clarity and I have started playing with how to convey the feeling of incompleteness in our recollection. Through interruption of the image, I aim to recreate the fragmented nature of the act of remembering. Objects spliced into scenes where they don’t belong, the clear image disrupted by an alien force. My work also calls upon the uncanny, for the past experienced through the lens of the present is somewhat uncanny. The image, familiar yet fragmented stirs feelings that are both comforting and disquieting.