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Along with most of us my life has been going through a period of intense
change. In April 2008, through no choice of my own, I had to leave my
beloved garden at Kingsgrove which had informed my early years as an artist.
My new home although well treed had only one floral plant - a lonely gardenia
bush sadly wrapped in a table tennis net from the previous young clan. I
managed to transfer quite a few plants from one garden to the other and now
after a 14 month period I am again feeling like I have a garden and the
inspiration is flowing.
My work has always been about the ebb and flow of life - the powerful cycle
where the beginning always portends the ending and vice versa. But at any
stage in the cycle there is unbelievable beauty especially when one can focus
in closeley and then examine the images in larger scale.
I had for some time grappled with a vocabulary to describe my area of art. I
could say it was not figurative and yet every image I produced spoke to me of
a human personality. This became the basis for the Allure exhibition at Storm
Gallery in 2008. Is it landscape? The only ‘land’ in the images is incidental
background supporting the subject which I often label more in my mind as the
character.
The term gardenscape gradually emerged and I think well describes what I do.
However in this age of a need for marketing ‘gardenscape’ was well claimed
already on the web.
I had changed my name to Jardin around 2003. I had picked ‘Jardin’ as it was
the technical term for the inclusions (impurities) in emeralds that helped
gemmologists determine naturally created emeralds from those which were
industrially manufactured. I loved the inference. I was well aware that jardin
was the French word for garden but at the time that had much less meaning
for me. However as the garden-jardin connection grew it seemed logical to
play with the term jardinscape.
The old website suejardin.net.au has become jardinscape.com and it will
encapsulate jardingallery.com. I hope that as well as reflecting my fine art
some of my other design interests and particularly my graphic design skills will
be showcased.
My main aim however, is that you will enjoy what I have produced. There is a
page with free downloads. And if you want to talk to me call, or email.
July 2009 |
