What Makes an Artist - Spotlight on Jo Lamb and Jane Merfield, Spring 2020

Jo Lamb and Jane Merfield are exhibiting oil paintings in the Spring Collection. During the very hot spell of last summer, the artists went together to Sheffield Park and Tidemills. The two excursions produced sketches and inspiration for their current work now seen some eight months later. They are very different artists yet there is a quality they share: a capacity for thoughtful artistic meditation on what is seen and felt. Both draw on deeply-held memories while working in the present; the timeline of their lives is contained in each painting.

Jane explains: ‘The stark beauty of Tidemills links me with Greece, an open, scrubby landscape and the pull of the sea. Escape, breathing freely, the immediate sensations of wind, water, and the smell of salt. 'I swam while Jo Lamb drew. I contemplated such a well of memories and took those back to my studio, revisiting caves, shrines and dry riverbeds. ‘When Jo and I went to Sheffield Park together I felt a reconnection with Scandinavia… ‘… bright greens edging expanses of still water, the extraordinary trees providing such a lush calm. These links are what feed my work, which can be more or less abstract, more or less exuberant or subtle.’

Jo writes: ‘I had made a series of drawings and photographs in Sheffield Park with Jane Merfield. During late summer and Autumn my son would come and stay and we would go on excursions to Sheffield Park or Wakehurst Place to look at trees and the Seed Bank which my partner Robert had been involved with in a loose way when it was first made. ‘I started the Sheffield Park series in early January. It had something to do with a series of abstract greeting cards that I made, that I really liked and enjoyed making. It could have been my looking at the art of Nick Bodimeade - an artist I know and respect – his luscious landscapes incorporating colour and cycle rides seen on the artist’s peepshow - Instagram. Goodness, they have taken a long time to come to fruition. I could say they have been every way up, down, destroyed, started again, looked at critically. I wanted to achieve colour that works, good composition-pieces that have a starting point and a conclusion… Some of this work has been made whilst we have been in lockdown, and it has been great to be holed up in the studio meditating on shapes and shades of green.’