APRIL SONG Painting

Jeanette Lafontine presents pictorial worlds through both intuitive and controlled gestures, often returning to landscape motifs as a source for painterly invention. In her work she is exploring imaginary landscapes and dreamlike places through abstraction, and these landscapes often becomes a starting point for experimentation with different techniques. She is interested in the process of making a painting, and her method becomes a search for images - they are discovered rather than created. Although her work ranges from minimalist landscapes to colorful and expressionist motifs, the Nordic landscape often makes itself known. Many of her latest works are based on drawings, making a dialog between the painted gestural surface and the drawn image, and between the intentional and the accidental. «My process often begins by making a series of drawings on paper. These drawings can be rough sketches of a location, a view, or they can be intuitive sketches – either way they are an approximation of a specific moment, or of something half remembered. Then I also make lots of paintings on paper where I randomly, and without any particular plan, are adding color and using different techniques to create these colorful landscapes. When moving over to the canvas these processes are usually merged together, where a drawing, shape, line etc are applied to the canvas, and paint becomes the material to make depth and texture to the work. I am interested in painting both as an object and an idea. How different elements and shapes are making a pictorial space that can trigger our imagination, but also the physical qualities of a painting.» … «Even though my works are often drawn from the landscape, I am not attempting to capture something about a particular place or time. It is more about a notion or idea of a landscape.»