Jacqui Painter: Discovering creative voice through abstract art

Introducing the abstract artist Jacqui Painter. Based in Brighton Jacqui juggles her art career as well as working with young adults as a counsellor. For her, painting art and counselling compliment each other well. As Jacqui says, “It is all about the expression of one’s inner life, just using different methods to express that and finding the most accessible way to do that.”

Jacqui’s artwork is created on medium and large canvases using mostly acrylic. Her work is abstract, expressive and has an organic feel. Initially inspired by her surroundings (the sea and Downs) her pieces are created mostly in response to her internal landscape and energies which come through intuitively.

As she says about the process,”I make marks in a variety of ways with lots of different brushes and tools. I use different methods to build up paint layers and textures followed by various forms of working the paint back through using lots of water or sanding and loads of scratching into the paint. I’ll repeat this process many times and frequently paintings will work their way through several identities until the true shape and form come through in a way that communicates something authentic to me. The time it takes to create one piece, and how easily that process occurs, varies massively.”

Jacqui grew up in Birmingham and did her Art Foundation Course at Bournville College of Art in 1990, fondly remembered as one of the most enjoyable and freeing times fully focusing on Art all the time. Then, she moved down to Brighton to study her degree in Painting and never left it. For what Birmingham gave her in self-effacing humour, Brighton gave her the sea.

Experiencing disability, she has a limb difference, Jacqui finds the experience of expressing herself through drawing and painting, especially while growing up, as a life saver. As she says, “Art never disabled me as society did. The 70s and 80s were terrible for inclusion, the 90s weren’t much better and I internalised a lot of stuff that wasn’t mine to carry and it all got a bit too much for me after my degree and I stopped painting for a while. Painting means revealing oneself and being seen and back then I didn’t feel able to do that authentically. I had to work a lot of other stuff out first before coming back to it.

I reconnected with myself, and the happy side-effect of finding my voice was also discovering my creative voice again. Sometimes words just don’t cut it and only paint will do.”

Jacqui Painter exhibits with four other Brighton based artists at the Regency Townhouse in Brighton in November. For more information please click here

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