Painting

Painting Synopsis

In these subtle and penetrating essays the artist Tess Jaray considers the work of painters past and present whom she admires, from the old masters Giotto and Piero to contemporaries such as Basil Beattie and Martin Creed. She also reflects on the questions that motivate her own practice: how we apprehend beauty, and what are the evocative qualities of particular colours? She often returns to the idea that artists are constantly searching for patterns to make sense of the world. Jaray shares this modernist sensibility with the writer W. G. Sebald, who features in several pieces in this collection and whose presence is felt throughout. Like Sebald, in these essays Jaray approaches the mysteries of making art, where it comes from and what happens when we look at it, in our heads and in our hearts.

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