over de zee (2007) Painting by Christiane Jean

Christiane Jean
The work of the Belgian artist Christiane Jean takes shape in a diversity of works. They can be distinguished according to paintings, sculptures and illustrations. Regardless of the form in which her images are expressed, these art forms connect through an underlying attitude and approach to the contents and themes of her work. Contents and themes make visible those experiences that are based on the reality and realities of her stories, where fact and fiction intertwine to form images of an imaginative view of the world. Stories and images are recognizable for everyone and leave room for their own way of dealing with data, subject, and the visible. Not in the sense of “what you see is what you get”, no: it gives more: “what you see is more than what you get, you have to make your own mental image when seeing images”: an active observation and experience.
Paintings /
Christiane Jean's collection of paintings with various themes about characters in cartoon-like fairytale and children's worlds, worlds of colorful animals and miniature stories find a specific accent in series of portraits. In this way, the group of portraits, created on the basis of photos of people, forms a story of characters from then and now. A whole in itself, such as the cobra painters from the years 1948/1951, apparently admired by her; by many and known in their image and formed image. But each there, her individually formed image also evokes in her approach and story in color and form, figuration and abstraction by means of the appropriate material, oil paint, a characteristic of the supposedly known artists: a simultaneously psychological interpretation of an already existing image. / image of those artists, but now more as a character in her personal portrait gallery. The sculptures, paintings, created in a long-lasting layer by layer, constructing whole of tonalities show a harmony and balance, reinforced in its quality by the stiff dullness of the material used with knowledge and skill.
Images/
From seemingly insignificant elements and / or fragments she builds her images, musing and looking, which in a wonderful way bring about a whole new world and meaning. In that process of searching, feeling, fitting, knowing, measuring and making intuitive decisions about the form and its visual aspects, the images become extravagant objects. Drawing on, it seems, the style repertoire of the Baroque, Rococo or Romanesque tones and the collageed objects reveal a visual reality that evokes atmospheres in their extravagance that are reminiscent of the cocky Calvinist North, even though she lives and works. for years in the old historic center of The Hague, a source of inspiration and reference to her birthplace Brussels. Examples such as “the three graces”, Casanova or “The ...

• Nationality: BELGIUM
• Date of birth : 1953
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Belgian Artists