Art is a very sensory experience . . . so much so, that some artists even seem to convey smells, tastes, and textures through their images alone. I think you’ll agree that Jelaine Faunce is one such artist.
Jelaine graduated from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas with a BA in Art. Now, she works meticulously to create exquisite oil paintings that you can almost taste. . . and for the past few years Jelaine’s subjects have been objects that make her feel good, creative, alive and happy: things like detailed tea cups, frosted cupcakes, lustrous coins, and sweet sugar cubes.
Her style is inspired by chiaroscuro, so she strives for as much contrast between shadow and light as possible. This contrast, paired with her luminous colors and reflections, is what makes her work stand out.
Jelaine’s oil painting process is quite time consuming and meticulous. She paints in very fine layers, sometimes up to 20 in her final pieces. Her goal is to eliminate all brushstrokes. A fan brush and a steady hand create the “deliciously creamy” surface on all her images.
These highly realistic paintings always have simple compositions and subject matter, and yet, although simplicity is at their core, her subjects are never boring.
Sometimes Jelaine even injects subtle humor, like in the image below titled “Choosing One over the Other”. Not only can I not decide between the cake and gift, but I can’t decide which of Jelaine’s paintings is the most captivating overall.
Currently, Jelaine is starting to shift into a new vein of work that is more personal, and will be launching a new website within the next month. I encourage you to take a peek at her blog, then watch for some exciting changes in the near future.
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Thanks, again, Lisa!!
6” x 6” - oil on canvas - 2007 - SOLD
I realize now, after taking nearly half an hour to accomplish what should have taken only 10 minutes, that a little caffeine jolt in the morning is a good idea. At least if I’m going to be interviewed. This morning, I found myself stumbling over simple sentences and concepts while trying to describe my process for an online artist’s resource article. It comes out next week.
I want it to say this:
“I have a predilection for chiaroscuro, a technique most commonly associated with one of my earliest influences, Caravaggio.”.
I fear it will say this:
“I like dark stuff, with light, like that dead guy who painted his boyfriend a lot back in the 1500’s. And stuff.”
In college, I was constantly trying to tell stories with my paintings. I was also drawn to mixed media rather than just single media (collage vs. oil or acrylic or drawing). I didn’t want to be limited by a single palette. Oddly enough, when I finished school, I immediately began working exclusively with either oil or acrylic, depending upon the job. For several years I was working steadily, doing murals, or private commissions, or establishing an online client base with small works that I sold through public auction venues. It earned me a little money and a lot of practice. As a result I can, with full confidence, now say that there’s not much I can’t paint. I don’t question my abilities. That’s a big deal. That’s something for which I am very grateful.
You know what else I learned? I learned that boredom will kill you. No, literally. Turns out that assembly-lining for the sake of money is no way to stoke the creative fires. While I found some inspiration in doing strictly representational work of subjects which interested me, I also found that not telling stories with my work was enough to almost cancel out the joy of the other experiences entirely.
Last year I had some time off. I worked very little. I spent a lot of that time thinking about where I wanted to go with my skill set. I kept coming back to mixed media and to telling stories. I kept coming back to where I began before I got lost in the monetary aspect of it all. I looked over the archives of jpegs I have kept of my work from the past decade. That’s a lot of paintings. The ones that stood out to me where the quirky little detours I’d occasionally take every year or so, where I’d venture down the path of mixed media for the sake of my sanity. And where many of the other paintings (not all, in fact there was much about many of the paintings which were very inspiring and fulfilling), while beautiful, left me feeling cold and distant, those detour paintings made me feel alive, so very much alive. There’s another lesson learned - I have good instincts about myself. I should listen to them.
Early this year I was approached by a couple galleries wanting to see my latest portfolio. Problem is, what I did have was not representative of where I wanted to go. So I asked for some time to put things together and I scrapped everything I was working on and everything I had completed. To put it in perspective, pretend you’ve gotten most of the way through building a house all by yourself from the foundation up, and all you have left to do is to install some bathroom tiles and paint the den, and you say to yourself, “F**k it.” and bulldoze the whole thing to rubble instead.
And you FEEL GOOD doing it.
That was me in a nutshell at the start of the year.
And I started over. From scratch.
A few months ago, while going through the painstaking process of creating an entirely new portfolio of works, I got contacted by a former gallery I’d worked with that was looking for an artist to attempt some interesting mixed media ideas. Would I be interested? Gee, let me think. While my main portfolio in progress was not mixed media, it was highly personal and symbolic. To say yes to this offer was like a gift from the Universe, a way to get back into collage again, to expand my horizons, to play. Oh, to play and play and play. My inner four year old jumped at the chance to do this. So, now here I am working on two portfolios which, combined, complete the circle and bring me back to where I began all those years ago. I am home. It’s wonderful.
(New work to be posted soon on my official art blog and website, just as soon as I finish bulldozing the s**t out of them, too.)
