About me
I am a Sussex based artist who has also practised as an art psychotherapist in the NHS for over twenty years. My dual practice as an artist and psychotherapist inform one and other: both reflect an enduring passion for using art as a way of giving form to what is unformulated, expressing things that may feel impossible to put into words.
I am interested in issues of the vulnerability of both the human body and psyche within its environment as well as notions of self in relation to others. The forms are fragile or tough, are blurred or have edges, are separate or merged. Although my work has a human presence the forms I use are not human forms as such. They relate to the body rather that representing it directly. My paintings are also concerned with time, memory and connection, particularly semi-recalled sensory memories. I hope the viewer is able to have an engagement with the work that unfolds gradually and calls to mind the way momentary subjective experiences connect us with our self and others.
Each painting takes many months to make. They are built up over many layers and are created in a constant state of revision. The process of tuning in to the feeling of the painting and letting that feeling develop over a period of time can be very slow. The action of making is important with the materials being subject to actions like being torn, stitched, layered and wrinkled. The surface of the paintings reveals the process of layering involved in making them, concrete, plaster, raw canvas and delicate stitching are built up slowly over the surface along with oil paint that is layered and then scraped back and dissolved, this is by nature both time consuming and unpredictable, and the painting is only finished when it has established its own unique mood, energy and atmosphere.
Jules Allan
July 2023