jillytinniswood.co.uk

About Artist

Jilly Tinniswood was born near Hay-on-Wye on the border between Wales and England. She credits much of her works influences and ethics to the fact that she grew up in such a beautiful rich environment.

She has a professional background in mental health, ran a successful craft business and created structures for theatrical performances but has narrowed her focus over the last decade to concentrate on her work as an artist.

.Artist Statement

'My work is about exploring the emotions evoked by a subject matter from an individual perspective. It is never about an exact visual representation, but an interpretation of the whole experience.

It is about celebrating the complex line and form of the human existence and its complex relationship with nature, the vulnerability and wonder.'

Method: The technique I’ve developed involves building up gradual layers of mixed recycled materials integrated with paint which I sculpt into at different stages during the drying process. It gives me control over the direction a piece is taking but still allows for an organic flow that I feel is essential in my work, as is the contrast in textures and relief lines, rough against smooth. It calls to be explored by touch and I encourage this, believing my work is always viewed with a clearer understanding when it is up close and in person.'

Artist's thoughts:

Antoni Gaudi once said, "Man does not create…he discovers." Creativity is a strange, delightful and sometimes tortuous phenomenon, poorly understood even in our enlightened times; in fact, we may understand it less in our modern minds because our culture demands an exact analysis of any field. The trouble is, the urge to create artistically constantly resists scientific scrutiny.

Probably more than any other area of my life, my work seems to be fed and nurtured by dreams: that vast, spiralling mesh of all human experience, conscious or unconscious. The persistence of visual images in my sleep and the subtle but powerful influence of the Land beneath me and within me go a very long way to explain what I create.

Gaudi went on to say, "Originality consists in returning to the origin." Like our dreams themselves, nothing we do can ever be entirely original or separate.

But it is the fusion of the ancient and the contemporary that has shaped my work. You can only be so deliberate when creating. The rest is up to something else that we still cannot define. Sometimes the whole process has such a life of its own that we might consider the artist to be the medium.

by Jilly Tinniswood