Current Moods

Exploring the interplay between painted landscapes and human emotion, Jean Stewart captures mood and feeling offering an escape for the viewer to step into amidst our current climate.

“Because these paintings took so long to make maybe slightly over two years and for the first two works at least I had no deadline just a meandering, there are so many ideas. So, I thought as an accompaniment for the work I would just provide a kind of list of all the little signs and ideas that I can remember things that influenced each work. There is of course a difference between the influences and the result so please don’t read this as an explanation. 

Feeling 1 – impending doom something about to fall, the speed of change the unrecognizable new world, the paint scrapings peeled off the floor and stuck into a diary years ago that look like a falling figure. Artificial intelligence, surveillance, Global Warming. My dear friend saving this painting by saying she wants to have it. Then after putting the word stay into, it, finding out she is seriously ill STAY. All these things. The sky and the earth interacting. The Future. 

Feeling 2 – A coming home feeling a comfort. Still got the wonder and the reminiscence. The Luminescence. Grandma and Grandad’s, same landscape different feeling, Tangowahine. 

Holes in the fabric of reality – thinking of my friend calm and graceful and him gone and the trees and the spaces between. And all the things’ people and events that leave holes and openings in the fabric of our realities. Ave Maria sung operatically. And just a painting of trees from life. 

Even in the quiet places it feels like war – This painting was named at the end. A ruru appeared when I was looking for a spot to paint from, it was in the middle of the day and weird that it didn’t fly away, then I saw why it had a baby sitting close by on another branch but there was something wrong with it, baby ruru with a bung and bulging eye. Babies in war zones. I let the light falling on the canvas start the painting off, in the end this painted light looked like camo. I thought to paint in one of the commercial planes that fly on the flight path overhead every hour or so. It came out looking like a war plane. 

Tree hugger – how does it feel to be a human compared to a tree. Bringing all my hot human flabbergast Ness to the cool trunk of a tree. Thinking of a painting by Peter Booth of a man and his dog in a flaming world trying to paint my version. Work in progress.” 

About the artist

Jean Stewart is a painter and senior arts educator based in West Auckland, holding a Masters Degree in Design and Painting. Over the past 20 years, her practice has explored storytelling through colour, mark-making and memory. Jean's work often extends beyond the canvas, connecting communities through site-specific projects. Her recent work includes the Whau Local Hero portrait series, Avondale 2020; Departure Lounge, Kings Arms Tavern 2018; Mō Te Emepaea, Tairawhiti Museum 2017.

www.jeanstewart.co.nz

Artist Kōrero and Open-Air Drawing Workshop
Saturday 30 August
10.30am - 12.30pm