Jenny Morgan’s beautiful paintings are immensely personal pictures that are both intimate and haunting, her subjects naked before the world, their physical and emotional state bared, open, vulnerable.
Morgans paintings are large forceful pictures of herself and friends obscured by abstract marks and blocks of colour which both heighten and obscure as if she wants to celebrate their physicality through realism only to destroy the picture, using graphic markings and blurrings, in an exploration of their psychology as she says herself:
The figure is simply the most compelling subject matter for me, it feels natural and with the ebb and flow of my style and maturity, I find new ways to approach the portrait. It has taken me years to break through walls that were developed when I was younger- ideals about the tradition of painting and the preciousness of realism. I have reached the point where I need to play around with the paint on the canvas surface just to keep myself interested and engaged in the process. I am exploring and “messing up” my realist hand by employing different methods of disturbing the surface through sanding and glazing.The most intensely exciting portraits for me to paint as of late have been the people in my life that I know personally, but not intimately- if there is a spark of mystery to our relationship it leaves room for me to explore them on canvas.
Each of these paintings manage to capture a vulnerability, a moment of surprise, hesitation or doubt, her subjects are alone, left to be examined, naked, alone. It is in their eyes that we see our humanity, it is in their eyes we are given a window to examine ourselves.