Jenny Bell
Grave no. 66 2006

I will never be over the Grave paintings - they were very important to me. The paintings were done in the various cemeteries around here. I typically took my paints etc. and spent four hours working day after day - over weeks and months and then years without any plan or particular intention.

I had looked out of the window of the Collector Hall one morning and saw the white crosses and the various graves set against the hill - and they struck me with a force as if seen for the first time. I am not sure how many years I was compelled to go back, but it was at least five years. I didn’t notice the plastic flowers until one caught my eye, and I think they kept me there for another couple of years.

The five works you have encapsulate that time. They work as a series beautifully but I think a couple of them have a power all their own. I don’t think you ever quite know where works come from and what they mean - it changes with time, of course the cycle of life and death is obvious, but it’s there when I paint a cow or a shed or a hill too. I was fascinated by the graves themselves, the people who put them there, and the stillness. And (Stephen) Mori didn’t blink when I turned up with them - he saw them as a crucial continuation, not a break with the past.

Jenny Bell, March 2022

Biography:

Jenny Bell attended the National Art School and completed a Bachelor of Art at Sydney College of the Arts. Her drawings, paintings and works in relief distil decisive moments in the plain landscape she has spent almost a lifetime immersed in. The exterior traces of human and animal activity on the land, and the resultant biological processes that so captivate Bell hint at interior worlds particular to their environment. She explores this juncture with economy and restraint.

Bell has been Highly Commended in the Portia Geach portrait prize, written articles for art magazines including Art and Australia and Art Monthly, and since leaving art school in the 1980’s has regularly held solo exhibitions in Sydney as well as exhibiting in Canberra, Melbourne and NSW regional art galleries. In 2019, Bell hosted a two day drawing and painting workshop with Earth Canvas, reflecting on regenerative farming practices and documenting the natural landscape. Jenny Bell is represented by Australian Galleries, Sydney and Melbourne.