Lots Road Group portrait painter Sarah Jane Moon is also a member of The Contemporary British Portrait Painters and will be exhibiting with them at The Department Store Brixton 11-18 June. Do save the date!
Sarah is currently half way through a sabbatical year in her native New Zealand where she has studios in the Bay of Plenty.
LRG’s Sarah Jane Moon is taking part in Heart of the Matter, curated by Mollie E Barnes, Founder of She Curates, at the Gillian Jason Gallery.
The exhibition launches tomorrow (Monday 8 March) on International Women’s Day 2021 and will open in the gallery’s 3D Virtual Viewing Room and run until 15 April.
Heart of the Matter features new and recent works from a stunning line-up of artists incluing Tracey Emin, Bridget Riley and Chantal Joffe,
In support of International Women’s Day theme of 2021, both Gallery and Curator will #ChooseToChallenge gender inequality in the art world while providing a platform for emerging and established artists. http://www.gillianjason.com
If you would like to learn more about Sarah Jane, click here to read an interview she did a while back with the Mall Galleries.
And if you’d like to take a virtual tour of her studio with The Net Gallery click here.
15 July – 24 August 2020
Exclusively Online
We’re thrilled to see Lots Road Group artist Sarah Jane Moon will be exhibiting with Projectroom2020, an Art North Projects Initiative.
‘PAINTING LIVES’ is now online and runs until 24th August. The exhibition includes 35 of Sarah’s large portraits, displayed via installation shots and a virtual walkthrough. The show is accompanied by a full catalogue featuring text by Diana Souhami and Julia Bell.
“All wait to be depicted, inviting interpretation. They are posed, usually seated, mostly alone, some with a partner. All are light years away from the reclining nudes, befrocked daughters and family members of nineteenth-century male portraiture.” – Diana Souhami
To view the exhibition click here.
With our first show, ‘Motherhood’, opening this week we take time to chat to New Zealand born Sarah Jane Moon, recipient of The Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ 2013 Bulldog Bursary, about life lived across continents, her transition from curatorial theory to portrait painting and several exciting upcoming projects.
Sarah Jane Moon working on a commission in Scotland
How did you become a painter?
I often feel like the process of becoming a painter is a continuous one, but that stated, I first started painting as a child. I was always ‘good at art’ winning several local awards for drawing and was often accused of ‘copying’ by friends at primary school, which I took as a compliment. I distinctly remember the excitement of finger painting before then at kindergarten and also a peculiar fair ground entertainment that involved squeezing tubes of paint onto a spinning wheel with paper attached to produce a sort of kaleidoscopic pattern. I was always drawn to pattern and intricate detail, my most favourite colouring in books being those that had repetitive designs ad nauseam.
Teenage years saw my interest in art continue and I was very keen on New Zealand painters such as Toss Woollaston, Rita Angus and Colin McCahon. I had one particularly memorable teacher who was flamboyant and bohemian and used to refer to colours as ‘flavours’ and seemed to be viscerally affected by tone and line. She was fabulous and her enthusiasm infectious. However I was also fascinated by other subjects and a rather pragmatic upbringing encouraged me to choose Japanese language and English literature to study at university. Having to choose extra courses to fulfil points requirements I soon added Art History as a third major and looking back it was obvious that I had probably just wanted to paint.
On graduating university in New Zealand I then travelled for a decade or so, living and working in countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Australia and, by roundabout route, the UK. A break in my nascent career in Arts Management led me to take a short course in drawing at Central St Martins (after having not drawn a thing for 12 years) and that soon led, by chance to a late application and enrolment on Heatherley’s Portrait Diploma. I was very very amateur in the beginning but many of the tutors were kind enough to encourage me anyway and I soon gained some degree of competency in drawing. Since finishing the course in 2011 I have been painting and drawing professionally.
What drew you to portraiture in particular?
The week long course I took at Central Saint Martins was tutored by a fabulously enthusiastic young woman by the name of Alice White. At the end of the course she was astute enough to suggest that my inept scribbling, which she kindly referred to as ‘mark making’, would potentially suit portraiture. Being rather adrift in all other areas of my life at the time and searching for something to invest myself in, I was off to google ‘portrait courses london’ immediately and thus ended up at Heatherley’s.
Although I like to paint landscape and still life, I continue to be seduced by portraiture and find it a rich vehicle by which to contemplate intimacy and distance, presence and absence and the things that constitute the identities of our selves and others. I think life is about people and human connection and so feel fortunate to have my profession reflect that in some way.
‘Tamson, Kilburn’, 140 x 146 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2013
Which other artists or painters do you look to for inspiration and why?
There are so many. Some that come to mind immediately: Lucian Freud, Alice Neel, Henri Matisse, Paula Rego, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, David Hockney, Maggi Hambling, Frank Auerbach, John Bratby, Euan Uglow, Leon Kossoff, Colin McCahon, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Laura Knight, Francis Bacon, Tai-Shen Shierenberg, Hokusai Katsushika, Amedeo Modigliani and Georges-Pierre Seurat.
Also many of the tutors I have been fortunate enough to study with (Atul Vohora, Andy James, Linda Nugent, Khan Holly, Susan Engledow, Susan Wilson) and many poets and novelists too.
What, to you, constitutes a good portrait?
I think there are many definitions of a ‘good’ portrait, but when making work myself I like it to, as a given, have something of an accurate likeness, and then to further go beyond this and convey something of how a particular person IS in the world; to state something about their presence or demeanour or character. It must then function as a good and interesting picture formally, that is, to be harmonious in terms of composition, colour, detail, content. I like portraits of people to be set in environments that are particular to them and that tell part of the story of who they are.
Do you have any current projects that you’d like to tell us about (exhibitions, articles, websites, commissions, personal projects)?
I currently have a painting in the Lynn Painter Stainers exhibition at the Mall Galleries which runs until 22nd March, and I shall be exhibiting again in May with The Royal Society of Portrait Painters in their annual exhibition (8th- 23rd May) as recipient of the Bulldog Bursary.
There is a short article on my work in the current issue (2) of Muff magazine.
I am working on several commissions, one for Jesus College at Cambridge, and also have several personal projects ongoing. One that I’m particularly excited about involves two very large (250 x 200 cm) group portraits that will be set in a late 17th century house in Stepney Green.
My website is sarahjanemoon.com and I have a facebook page here.
Many thanks Sarah Jane!
(all images and text copyright thelotsroadgroup 2014, please ask permission before use)
The Lots Road Group 