Paintings on aluminium displayed |10 July 2007

Guests, who included past and incumbent ministers, members of the diplomatic corps, chief executives of government and private sector organizations admired Jenson’s work which will be on display and sale until this coming Friday.

The artist, a Seychellois who established an art gallery on La Digue in 1994, said that her work is different from others in approach, techniques used and subject matter.

“The work is in two categories, and the first arises from my interest in the natural environment, the lush colours, dramatic shapes and every changing light of the landscape around me, which provides an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

“I try to extrapolate something of the energy found in the landscape and set out to animate the paint with the vitality of what is around me with expressive brush and use of colour,”  she said.

She said that the second category consists of much more controlled iconic portraits done on aluminium plates, “using the people around me as models, but referenced to the vast body of African art.”

She said that the aluminium plates are recycled printing plates, cleaned and then aged in various ways for several years, on which varnish is then laid in a controlled manner before being worked on in a variety of techniques that she has developed over the last 10 years or so.

“These include incising, scratching, polishing staining, texturing with PVC glue, newspaper, sand metallic powders, crackle glazes and more,” she said.