Elle Jackson Q&A
Q. What is your background / training and how influential has that been?
I consider myself to be largely self-taught, with some formal training. I didn’t set out to become a visual artist, as I didn’t initially see the possibility of following art as a career. I attempted two different academic degrees, one being History of Art, which I did love, but ultimately I felt a calling to be in an art school environment and to express myself creatively. I ended up on a foundation course at the art school, Metàfora, in Barcelona, where I also studied art therapy. Here, I was really trying to figure out my identity, and what I wanted to express as an artist. I think I struggled to establish this here, but I know the environment and culture had a huge influence on me, as well as the history and style of Catalan and Spanish art. Studying art therapy alongside also had a great influence on me. After art school, it was still a few more years before I found the path of becoming a professional artist, but I never stopped creating or following my curiosity. I’ve always been interested in dance and the body, so I spent some time studying and practicing forms of somatic movement, which is something that has also informed the work I make now.
Q. What first inspired your practice as a painter?
I didn’t do much painting at art school, as I was interested in collage art during this time, but it was mostly painting that I studied at secondary school, and I believe it was because of my experience at secondary school that I was left with this pull to carry on exploring art. I had the most fantastic art teacher there, and he really encouraged me not only to paint, but to find my unique expression within the painting. He once instructed me to think about making my paintings ‘sing’, and this has always stuck with me. It’s perhaps a reason I now strive to find such an aliveness within my work.
I picked painting back up a few years after art school. It happened very organically, and I remember feeling a desire to find my voice through paint again. From then on, I spent as much time as I could painting – growing as a painter and forming my style.
You have described your work being inspired by landscape and materials. Can you expand on these sources of inspiration, particularly landscape?
It is the exploration and experience of the natural landscape that I am most interested in. The discovery of hidden parts and pieces, or the intimate moments spent there that connect you to a sensory realm. I have always been interested in extracting elements or moments of a landscape, or an image of nature. This has followed me from school, where I made paintings from cropped or zoomed-in images of trees and plants.
It is the act of contemplating a landscape and what this does for one’s mind and soul. The meditative qualities of looking and absorbing or touching and gathering. I enjoy foraging, and this has been another way of connecting to the land. I enjoy witnessing the seasons change, and I’m always drawn to the liminal stages, where a landscape seems dead or decaying and is awaiting change. There is so much to witness here if you allow yourself to be curious. It’s really taught me to find beauty during the liminal stages of my own life.
When it comes to materials, I gather a lot from the natural landscape, mostly during this liminal stage. I like oddly shaped things or unusual textures, and this is mostly formed by decay or leaves drying up and wrinkling into a new and interesting form. I like to keep these in my studio, which then act as vessels to this outside experience. The materials I collect to use in my work are gathered in a similarly curious and sensory way. I believe this is why I’m most attracted to naturally derived materials – particularly the use of clay which really roots me back to the earth.
The quality of gestural mark making is evident in your practice. Can you tell me more about the significance of mark-making processes for you?
I really view mark making as a language or form of communication. The focus on a mark keeps you in the present and allows for a rhythm to form. There is a practice I like to do outside the studio, that I call ‘blind drawings’, which involves mark making with any dry medium on paper, activated through sound or through sitting in a natural landscape. I remove the possibility of seeing what I am drawing, to allow for a spontaneous and ‘felt’ set of marks, influenced by the senses and the rhythm my hand takes hold of in that moment.
I believe that learning to access this state of allowing, and embracing possibility without judgement, has really shaped the way I paint and make work. I don’t like to control anything. I like things to form organically.
Q. Your practice seems very process driven. How significant is spontaneity and serendipity to the work?
I’m extremely process driven and really allow the moment, and my materials, to guide the way for me. I remember in the earlier days when I tried to control the way I painted and what I painted, and it never worked for me. It caused me distress, and I don’t believe this should be the outcome of making art.
I don’t think it’s possible to make the work I do now without allowing for spontaneity and serendipity. When you’re working with so many different materials, and materials that aren’t traditionally used together, you can never predict what will form. I enjoy the tension that can be created through the merging of fabrics and paint – it allows for so much possibility and surprise. At this stage, I can’t imagine setting out knowing what I want to create. Part of the beauty is in the surprise, and in this very intuitively led process. I can often be working on small work over the course of a year – layering and building it up, leaving it and coming back to it when I feel called to – waiting for the moment it feels complete and alive.
Q. Who or what have been your greatest influences as an artist? Which artists most inspire you, both contemporary practitioners and historical?
I have always been drawn to people who do things differently – artists who utilise material in interesting ways or challenge traditional ways of making or thinking. I liked Robert Rauschenberg’s work at school, as well as Cornelia Parker. Painters such as Bram Bogart and Frank Auerbach for their use of paint and layering. More recently, I have been inspired by the work of Martha Jungwirth, for her spontaneous, gestural works, and the sculptural work of Peter Buggenhout and Phyllidia Barlow. I’m also interested in the post-minimalist art movement.
Other creatives, such as fashion and textile designers, have been influential. I believe this has fueled my interest in material, and I’m often looking at the construction and putting together of historical or tribal clothing and theatre costume.
You use vivid colour in your work. Can you talk about your relationship with colour?
Colour is not necessarily on the forefront of my mind when making work. It’s another component that is chosen very intuitively, although I am consciously absorbing colour all the time. I am generally drawn to a softer, more organic palette. The body of work I made for my show ‘Bones’, ended up quite vibrant and colourful. Once I have finished a work I am often able to pinpoint where I have drawn particular colours from, based on what I may have collected in my studio during that time, or the environments I have found myself in outside of the studio. For this reason, my palette is changing all the time, like the seasons. Of course, I absorb a lot of colour inspiration from nature, but also the urban environment and fashion of the past and present. I think there is a level of confidence involved in the process of selecting colour, which is perhaps why I try not to think about it too much. But so much of my selection comes from looking – both around me and at the work during the making process. Like my marks, each colour choice informs the next, until what’s in front of me feels harmonious.
Q. What are the latest developments in your work?
I have been experimenting with some large-scale works, thinking a lot about surface and the various possibilities and outcomes. Scale makes an enormous difference in the way you work, and I’m really interested to see where it takes me.
I’ve also been working with cardboard a lot in the studio, as a found material I have grown a fondness for. I am enjoying finding ways to regenerate this material and capture a more minimalist or sculptural outcome than my more heavily painted works.
