Janet Sainsbury – In Profile (Ben Nicholson)

£220.00

In Profile (Ben Nicholson), 2024

Oil on ply panel

Framed

17.5 cm x 17.5 cm

Her feelings towards her subjects shift over time, and her portraits are not fixed likenesses but interpretations—elusive and fluid, capturing only one version of the truth while acknowledging that the subjects can never be fully known.

Janet Sainsbury paints portraits of 20th-century writers and artists she admires, including photographer Lee Miller, surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, and modernist writers Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys. Through researching their work and reading about their lives, she develops an intimate and emotional connection that manifests in her portraits. She seeks to convey the vulnerability, humour, and bravado she finds in their stories.

Janet expresses these feelings of empathy and familiarity through her use of colour and scale. Working from black-and-white photographs, she paints multiple versions of the same subject in her quest to understand them more deeply. On canvas, she builds up thin layers of colour, scraping back and repainting to create depth and nuance. On paper, she works quickly with washes of watercolour and ink, keeping details to a minimum.

The figures portrayed here have connections to Cornwall.

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