Wide-eyed by the sea

Enormous eyes.Haunting. Staring.  Eyes and bodies. Serious, contemplative faces, rarely smiling. Huge canvases. Feeling dwarfed. That was HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths’ initial impression as she walked into Chantal Joffe’s exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery.

Actually, that was not quite the first impression. The first was a an unmissable, vast canvas of a large nude man: Joffe’s partner and artist, Dan Coombe. Apparently, Dan’s own face was a picture when he turned up at the private view to be confronted by his own nude self and a roomful of mostly unfamiliar people who could recognise him. He reclines slightly incongruously on an Ikea, feminine, rose-strewn patterned throw. His face and his genitals are described in detail while his body is broad-stroked, giving an impression of mass rather than a visceral Lucien Freud-style body.

The face is marked by dribbles as if the image were unfinished or painted hurriedly. Yet, it feels as if the dribbles are somehow part of the portrait. Joffe often paints from magazine cuttings or photographs, although Naked Dan was painted from life; he was apparently telling her stories of obscure German films while she painted.

Joffe’s family lives in Hastings and from frequent visits she knows the area well. The walls of this exhibition By the Beach are crowded with her family. Through her familiarity with, and understanding of, her partner, sister, daughter, niece, dogs, it gives her the freedom to paint knowingly, consciously and fast.

Joffe favours large brush strokes, thick paint and evidently relishes the physicality of, and intimacy with, the canvas. She paints large or small canvases, something in the middle simply doesn’t work for her. “For me painting is dancing That’s one of the reasons I paint big. I like painting little pictures … but physically it’s important for me to paint big because it allows me to lose myself in the dance of production.”

The portaits are flat, simple, bordering on naive. They are mostly of girls or women. Girls stand oddly, a dog stands expectant; there is little animated expression or movement. Yet there is a strong presence of individuals  peering out of the canvas. Joffe is influenced by Edward Munch, Edgar Degas and Chaim Soutine as well as, surprisingly, photographers like Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander .

I bumped into a local artist at the Jerwood Gallery who was enjoying looking at the work but commented that, “I don’t see the struggle.” Reflecting on that comment I think if there is struggle, angst or whatever, it is internal and reconciled before the paint brush hits the canvas.

Looking at the pictures of her young nieces, many of them suggest an adolescent awkwardness. It is as if Chantal herself remembers those child/adult times, sensitive, vulnerable; that indeterminate period – no longer a child, not yet an adult – where there is an unease with oneself and one’s body.  Molly, Chantal’s niece, looks awkward sitting on a groyne in a bathing costume, slightly hunched – a self consciousness of youthful transition. Another niece, Vita, looks wide-eyed, slightly bemused.

Another portrait that illustrates the artist’s intuitive sense of body language is a portrait of the poet Anne Sexton and her daughter. Joffe is interested in poetry, specifically Sexton’s work. Sexton had long bouts of severe depression and an awkward relationship with her daughter. Joffe’s portrait is one of  vulnerability and sensitivity; someone of the world but not quite in it. Daughter and mother – who is comforting whom? Mother looking up towards her daughter, her daughter glances, somewhat distracted, pained, into the distance.

Joffe’s sister Emily stands firm, eyes watery against the wind on West St Leonards beach. It is a large, striking vertical painting of a tall, stylish, gaunt woman, leash in hand with her dog disappearing off the bottom of the picture. In several of the paintings, paint trickles down over the oils, green over Dan’s face, white down Emily’s coat.

I found a disparity in the dribbles of paint. There is a definite precision and direction in her painting and yet she leaves the trickles –  to say what? They point up the speed and essence of her mode of painting, does it also have some connection with the personality and presence of the individual? Even though she paints fast, she can finish a painting in a day, the paint drips aren’t always present. The drip is sometimes green (a colour that she definitely favours) and sometimes a colour that does not emanate and has no connection to the oils above. It seems as if there could be some logical rhyme and reason to it that I, anyway, cannot explain.

The exhibition was curated by Rose Wylie who was the first contemporary artist to exhibit at the Hastings Jerwood Gallery. As a form of appreciation and dialogue Wylie and Joffe have painted portraits of each other. Giving each other photographs, Wylie’s pen and ink on paper reflects Joffe’s style by having Joffe staring wide-eyed directly out of the picture. Wylie has  written characteristically on the work, A Drawing of An Artist. Joffe has responded with a painting of Wylie, stylish, in profile, contemplative and, in tribute to Wylie, adding the text ‘An Artist’.

 

Chantal Joffe: Beside the Seaside At Jerwood Gallery, Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings TN34 3DW until 12 April 2015. Tuesday–Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays 11am-5pm.

 

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