Jean Noble RI SWA

She exhibits regularly at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society of Oil Painters, the Royal Watercolour Society open exhibition, the Pastel Society at the Mall Galleries, The Discerning Eye, and many well-recognised galleries throughout the U.K.

She has won many awards for her work including from the Royal Society of Arts Design Award, the President’s Award Lea Valley Art Society Open, the Public’s Choice Ware Art Society Open,  the Abstract/Surreal Painting Award Hertford Art Society, The Lady Laming Award for Abstract and the John Goss Prize at Hertford Art Society.

Jean believes art is an extraordiany glance at the ordinary. Her work begins with something seen, a building, a landscape, a seascape, an object, a particular light and her finished painting evolves out of a process of continuous change and innate knowledge of colour and composition. She is particularly interested in the boundary between representation and abstraction but as she says, all her pictures “… are the result of personal experience and whatever reorganisation of the subject has undergone in the process of painting, something of the colours and shapes I originally saw always remain.” 

‘All my work begins in front of the subject, whether in the urban landscape or the countryside. I allow my eyes to relax and my thoughts to absorb what is around me, so that from the initial sketch, I make a response to my surroundings. Back in my studio, I interpret my sketches into paintings that once started, often dictate changes and further responses to colour and shapes that I recollect from my original interpretation. As an abstract painter, it is very important for me to keep the ‘idea’ of the original reaction to a given space and allow the viewer room for their own interpretations as well. Some of my work is intimate, some giving depth in space and air. The density of colour, its transparency or opacity, the layers that build up the painting are designed to add richness to forms within the flatness of the canvas or paper. My work is an on-going journey. So far the end is not in sight! My work has an ‘essential reality’ in its non-figurative execution. Hopefully, giving an immediate contact with the viewer. All my pictures are the result of personal experience and whatever reorganisation of the subject has undergone in the process of painting, something of the colours and shapes I originally saw always remain. Paint represents space and makes it ‘actual’. I do not start with the idea, but with the experience. My source is from the ‘sensation’ of the place. The summarised compositions never entirely relinquish specific subject matter whether in cities, sea or landscape, though they exercise freedom of paint handling of an abstract nature. I believe the artist should provide a stimulating point of departure for thought and feeling by giving a strong image to which people can respond by emphasising, eliminating and clarifying to allow others a fresh viewpoint. The paintings are about reality without resorting to imitation.”