JEMMA POWELL
Michael Tucker is a lecturer, curator, jazz critic and painter. Until his retirement in 2012 he was Professor of Poetics at the University of Brighton. The author of Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit In Twentieth-Century Art And Culture and Jan Garbarek: Deep Song he has written about a range of British painters, musicians and poets, including Alan Davie, Ivon and John Hitchens, Andrzej Jackowski, Ian McKeever, Tommy Smith and Kenneth White.
The Art of Jemma Powell c’est quand il n’ y a pas grande-monde qu’ il y a grand-chose Jacques Prévert
Like Avery and those equally singular artists, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, Jemma Powell is above all a colourist. In her poetics, colour (or rather, the relations between colours) conjures both textural atmosphere and a subtly worked interplay of structural matters of near and far, the horizontal and the vertical, the diagonal and the tangential. What runs through the breathing whole – and the art of Jemma Powell is above all a rhythmically vibrant art of lucidity and space – is the sort of lyrical or musical quality which cannot but invite the creative participation of the viewer’s imagination.
In the eulogy which he delivered for Avery in 1965, Mark Rothko spoke of those who are “born to sing”. As her art testifies, Jemma Powell is one such. Her mother, Lucy Powell, is an accomplished painter and art has long been central to Jemma’s life. But it took her some time before she realised that painting was her true creative path.
Jemma attended Bristol University and has a BA in Drama and a Diploma in acting from the Oxford School of Drama. For twenty years she worked successfully as an actress. “I enjoyed exploring and experimenting with the craft and the expressive possibilities of acting but painting always allowed me to go that little bit further. And now I feel such freedom! Life is so fast-paced today that painting has become of primal importance to me, my way of searching for calm amidst the chaos. When paint, at root am searching for stillness, as a way to get deeper into the nature of things – especially the often unnoticed, seemingly little things – as well as myself.”
Michael Tucker
LONDON at 2 Park Walk, London SW 10 0 AD Tuesday 4 th October 20226–8pm Paintings are for sale on receipt of this catalogue The entire exhibition can be viewed online at www.cricketfineart.co.uk SEARCHING FOR STILLNESS JEMMA POWELL requests the pleasure of your company at the PRIVATE VIEWof CRICKET FINE ART Exhibition dates: 5 th - 21 st October 2022 © Photograph by Jubie Balfour front cover (detail) Childhood Memories Oil on board 50 × 75 cm £2,750 back cover Little Boy on the Beach Oil on board 53 × 42 cm £1,950 In the summer of 2019, was invited to give a lecture at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to complement the Ivon Hitchens retrospective Space Through Colour. Eschewing a PowerPoint presentation and referencing actual paintings, my talk was called Making Paint Sing. A lyrical, broadly handled yet intimately cast garden scene by Jemma Powell was central to my theme. The Pallant House audience were of one mind: here indeed was paint(ing) that sang. Jemma Powell is an Oxfordshire-based artist who lives with her husband, singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti, and their three children and three dogs. Pitched intriguingly between figuration and abstraction, Searching for Stillness – Jemma’s first solo show – sustains throughout a register as contemplative as it is joyous. There are freely treated flower paintings and works rooted in her love of the Oxfordshire landscape as well as pieces triggered by trips to Italy’s Ligurian coast and Morocco. As her chief elective affinity Ivon Hitchens did, Jemma works ‘en plein air’. Initial responses are developed in the studio, mostly in oil on board, with memory and the sensations of being in particular places essential to a painterly sensibility as bold as it is tender. The work evolves intuitively. Jemma applies and wipes off paint, reapplies it with a brush or palette knife, scrubs the surface and even uses her fingers to conjure expressive marks. “I like the so-called mistakes that can occur. Often they can be be the most exciting part of a painting, as things start to appear and the work takes on a life of its own.” As the ‘American Fauve’ Milton Avery had it, “In order to paint, one has to go by the way one does not know. Art is like turning corners. One never knows what is around the corner until one has made the turn.”
The art which is to be relished in Searching for Stillness is as pleasing to the eye as it is stimulating to soul and spirit. Georges Braque, ostensibly a most ‘material’ painter, offered the transformative insight that, “The vase gives form to the void, as music does to silence.” Similarly, the art of Jemma Powell has the sort of double-edged resonance which can speak (or rather, sing) of matters both material and metaphysical. Here is the reverie, the open-eyed dreaming, which meant so much to Gaston Bachelard – that ‘poetics of space’ which furnished the late French philosopher with the ability to sense those things which, far from the ‘grande-monde’ disdained by his compatriot Prévert, might deepen our capacity to cherish life: the infinite in the intimate, the stilled potency of silent music, and – above all – the love that lies at the core of any truly creative endeavour, such as we encounter in this splendid exhibition.
2 3 Golden Autumn Oil on board 49 × 75 cm £2,750 Annabelle Hydrangeas Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
4 5 Early Evening Prayers from the Rooftops of Marrakesh Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
6 7 Pondering by the Peaceful Pond Oil on board 30 × 38 cm £1,750 Through the Blossom at Dawn Oil on board 51 × 76 cm £2,750
8 9 Weeping Willow in Autumn Oil on board 32 × 75 cm £2,100 Blowing in the Wind Oil on board 35 × 75 cm £2,100 Stormy Boccadasse, Italy Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
10 11 Water Meadow at Thyme Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250 In the Still of the Night, Portofino Oil on board 60 × 54 cm £2,500
12 13 Italian Church Amongst Umbrella Trees Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
14 15 Water Meadow at Dawn Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250 Autumn Flowers on Pink Stripey Tablecloth Oil on board 43 × 37 cm £1,750
16 17 Umbrellas in the Market, Morocco Oil on board 42 × 75 cm £2,500 Water Meadow at Dawn II Oil on board 42 × 46 cm £1,950
18 19 Christmas Teapot, Pears and Paperwhites Oil on board 74 × 100 cm £4,250
20 21 Winter Gave Me Flowers Oil on board 68 × 50 cm £2,500 Into the Autumn Leaves Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
22 23 Sweet Peas from Connie Oil on board 39 × 43 cm £1,850 Sweet Peas in Sunlight Oil on board 39 × 32 cm £1,750 Grape Hyacinths in Terracotta Pot Oil on board 46 × 35 cm £1,850 Pink Cyclamens Oil on board 40 × 40 cm £1,750
24 25 Madre Neutte (Mother of the Night) Oil on board 66 × 95 cm £3,900 That Sunday, That Summer Oil on board 35 × 46 cm £1,850
26 27 Woman in Pink with her Goats, Morocco Oil on board 60 × 50 cm £2,100 Midday Medina Oil on board 56 × 39 cm £1,950
28 29 A Quiet Place at the End of the Garden Oil on board 41 × 66 cm £2,100 Into the Blue Oil on board 49 × 75 cm £2,750 Lunch with Lucy Oil on board 74 × 87 cm £3,900
30 31 Midnight Medina Oil on board 68 × 50 cm £2,500 Still Dreaming of Umbrella Trees Oil on board 36 × 72 cm £2,100
32 33 Missing You Oil on board 45 × 45 cm £1,950 The River Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250
34 35 Celeste's Flowers Oil on board 86 × 72 cm £3,250 Pink Hyacinths in Chinois Pot Oil on board 76 × 55 cm £2,750 Portofino by Night Oil on board 51 × 74 cm £2,750
36 Falling Tulips in Wedgwood Vase Oil on board 76 × 102 cm £4,250 Dinner for Two Oil on board 27 × 33 cm £1,650
CRICKET FINE ART www.cricketfineart.co.uk 2LONDONParkWalkLondonSW100AD T: 020 7352 2733 M: 07778 568 367 info@cricketfineart.co.uk Hungerford1BarrsHUNGERFORDYard,Unit4BathRoadRG170HE T: 01488 647351 M: 07778 568 367 info@cricketfinearthungerford.co.uk
