ArtMinded by Jennifer Ely

Nostalgia 2008

48” x 24”

Water Soluble Oil Paint on Canvas and Strips of Former Paintings

Nostalgia is a piece that came to me in a more roundabout way. I was lamenting the stack of old high school work I had sitting in my closet staring at me. None of it was stuff I wanted anyone to ever see, but I still could not bring myself to throw it away. Instead I decided to rip the paintings into strips. I did so and then I collaged them onto a canvas and hung it on the wall to give myself time to think about it and what I would do with it. 

I thought it was a funny thing, to have nostalgia for these paintings I could not stand. To not be able to throw them away for some misplaced sentimental reason even though I would sooner die than have anyone associate them with me.

The canvas sat on the wall and Halloween came around. Two of my friends dressed as 50s prom king and queen. I thought that was an even more entertaining bit of misplaced nostalgia. To have a longing, or at least a reminiscent feeling toward a time period you have never experienced. Our idea of the 50s is so far removed from the actual experience of the time. It’s nostalgia for something that never even really existed. It seemed right to marry the two together. That is how this image came to be.

It was a fun experiment technically as well, I was conscious to leave much of the paintings underneath visible through the painting on top. I really enjoyed painting on such a busy surface. I locked the male figure in between the two brightest pieces of canvas. He is stuck peering out at the viewer, fully aware of the trap he is in.

Evolution of Awareness 2008

84” x 60”

Water Soluble Oil Paint on Canvas

This piece, entitled Evolution of Awareness, is an allegorical account of my experience of how I have become aware and involved in the world around me from childhood to now. In the first painting the girl is representing a child. As such she is very much “in the moment”. She is not cognizant of past or future or the impact she has on either. In the image she is literally and figuratively “smelling the flowers”. She is completely immersed in the present. There is a little figurine on the table facing out to represent the parental presence that is there to act as a shield between the child and the world.



The second painting in the triptych, is the stage where you begin to become aware of the effects your actions have on others and the world. I see this as an adolescent time period wherein your realizations come about in realizing your sexuality and how that functions in the manipulation of the things and people immediately around you. The girl in the painting is literally pulling a string. She is testing her effect on the environment she exists in.



Then the final installment in this threesome shows the girl looking back on herself. She begins to become more aware of her own actions and begins a more introspective line of thought. All the fabric and strings are there just to represent the world and interference going on outside the main character. All the clothing has circles on it to indicate the cyclical nature of this process. Compositionally I have pointed the paintings on either side back at one another both with the use of the cane in the last one and the legs and background in both the first and last.

This painting can be viewed in a larger capacity by clicking on the Paintings tab of the menu bar.

Cassandra 2007

40” x 60”

Water Soluble Oil Paint on Canvas

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a very tragic character who exemplified a lack of control. In the myth, the God Apollo (God of the Sun) was in love with the mortal Cassandra. Cassandra did not reciprocate the Sun God’s feelings and so in his hubris he punished her. He sent a snake to clean out her ears and afterward she was able to see the future. He also cursed her in that while she could see terrible things before they would happen, he made it so that no one would believe her warning of these events. She foresaw the Trojan Horse attack, in the image she holds a broken ceramic horse for this reason. Her shirt has eyes all over it signifying that she was a prophet, and the neckline of her blouse is a symbol of her doom. It sits like a bear trap around her throat. I have designed her to look very stiff and doll like. I have also enlarged her head, again to mimic that of a doll. She has no agency, she is a mute puppet in a psychological prison. The surface of the painting is riddled with scars, I laid in a heavy knife texture underneath the painting, so the paint that sits on top is smooth and softly blended but there is a lot of turbulence underneath the muted colors over it. 



When I was deciding on a background for this figure I wanted to really think about what I was interested in about this story. The story of Cassandra is basically that of rape, it involves one being stripping control away from another. It’s about helplessness and the despair that accompanies it. I remembered a story I had read long ago called The Yellow Wallpaper that shared some of this theme. The Yellow Wallpaper, was written by Charlotte Gilman in 1915. The short story is told to the reader through a series of journal entries. It is about a woman suffering depression in a time when not much credence was given to mental disorders. The woman in the story is married to a doctor who tells everyone that his wife is suffering from a “temporary depression”. He takes her out to the country and refuses to let her work or see anyone. He insists that she do nothing but rest. If you know anything about depression then you know that this is the worst thing that she could be made to do with such a problem. She makes these entries and in the beginning she notes her boredom and then subtly mentions the ugly yellow wallpaper in her room. As she goes on she begins to see the paper moving. Then she swears she sees a person in the wallpaper. Then she sees a woman, and by the end she believes that she herself is stuck in the walls. She does nothing but walk round the room driving her shoulder into the paper creating an indention all along the wall in a ring around the room.



So, Cassandra, the painting is very much my expression of that helpless feeling encountered in both stories. Technically in this painting I tried to achieve a feeling of discord. Of something being deeply wrong with the picture. I employed one technique that I think really gave her eyes the distinct haunted look that I really wanted. I painted the background yellow wallpaper first. Then when I painted in her face I modeled her skin and hair and everything as I normally would but I left that background color showing through the eyes. I was hoping that it would cause just enough confusion spatially to make the viewer feel that it was wrong somehow. It kind of flattened out the eyes back to the plane of the wall. This painting is 4ft. by 5ft so it is a bit hard to see from these smaller images but I would also point out that the wallpapers design has the Cassandra myth painted into it. It shows the Sun in representation of Apollo as well as a snake cleaning out the ears of the bust of Cassandra. I painted the paper in two interference gold and bronze colors so that it would do that shine thing that wallpaper does and add some visual interest.

This work can be viewed in a larger capacity by clicking on the paintings tab in the menu bar.