The Celebrity Series

Those who know me well know of my ridiculous obsession with being on the "pulse" of hollywood--I'm just a little bit curious about pop culture icons and the world of celebrity gossip.  Last winter, I embarked on a series of large scale portraits of well known celebrity and political icons by combining my love of portraiture with a combination of my style of abstracted squares and skin "tattooing".

My Sarah (Palin)

acrylic on canvas

48"w x 60" h

2009

The first in this series is a portrait of Sarah Palin.  No, I am in no way interested in the political views or controversy surrounding Ms. Palin.  One day I came across a full page image of Sarah in People magazine that struck me as an image that I just HAD to paint.  I do think she is a beautiful woman and at the time, it was difficult to go more than 20 minutes in a day without hearing her name on the news.  My first thought was to attempt to create a fully "realistic" portrait of her.  Once I started painting, I changed my mind and chose to just paint her eyes realistically, while trying out her hair in "squares".  I was exhilarated by the result.

It is a huge painting (4' wide x 5' high) and basically attacks the viewer from every angle.  I painted the little bit of background with matte black, almost giving it a "black velvet" effect.

My peers suggested that I figure out how to show Sarah Palin the image.  Turns out, that part wasn't so difficult.  I googled, "How do I reach Sarah Palin"?  At the time she was still governor of Alaska, so I was directed to a form letter from her office.  I sent off my letter and waited.  Well, I waited exactly 10 hours and got a letter back!  Her office thanked me for the letter and they did go to my website and Sarah herself did see the painting.  Wow.  Cool.

Oh Bama.

acrylic on canvas

48" w x 60" h

2009

The second portrait is of the man himself--Mr. President Barack Obama.  He is the same size as My Sarah, also with a matte black background to maintain some cohesiveness with the Sarah portrait.  I went to town will the "illustrated man" sort of skin--swirls and shapes of all my favourite colours.  I painted his mouth realistically this time.

I shipped both paintings off to Infusion Gallery in Los Angeles, CA to take part in a group show there for the month of June 2009.  There were over 350 people in attendance at the opening gala!  While neither piece actually sold at the show, they increased my viewing audience and reached people I could never reach while showing here in Toronto.  In fact, due to the show, I was contacted by a gallerist out of Italy, who invited me to show in a castle in Tuscany in October 2009.  I wasn't able to take part then, but have been contacted by the gallery again and it may be something I consider in the future.

 I had the two pieces shipped back to Toronto (it was quite an undertaking to ship the pieces to LA and back!!  I hope they thoroughly enjoyed their holiday there) to take part in the first ever "Art Beyond Walls" pop-up gallery show held on September 22, 2009 in Toronto.  Art Beyond Walls is an urban "pop-up" gallery hosted by The Village Gallery and gallerist extraordinaire, Alison Goodwin.  The show was very well attended by over 200 people and featured the work of myself, Alison Hodson and Andrew King.  The Village Gallery currently has 8 of my pieces on display in Mississauga, Ontario.  More about The Village Gallery in a moment...

Her Madgesty

2009

acrylic on canvas

48" x 48"

The third piece in my celebrity series is of my favourite musical artist, Madonna.  My history with Madonna goes waaaaaaay back.  I remember listening to "Holiday" in grade 9 at the Etobicoke School of the Arts and wanted so badly to replicate her image even then (man, I loved those rubber bracelets).  In the fourth year of my degree in Visual Arts at UWO, I chose to do my thesis on Madonna, entitled, "Madonna: The Quintessential Icon of our Time".  That was in 1993.

This portrait was a labour of love.  It seems as though I spent months painting Madge's hair alone.  This combination of all my different styles of painting is ridiculously time consuming.  Each of these three portraits took me over 100 hours each to complete.

Getting back to Art Beyond Walls, Alison had her PR firm Lucid Technologies really go to town in promoting the event.  Fashion Television came and interviewed all of us prior to the show starting.  That was one of the penultimate moments of my life, I might add.  I have read every issue of Vogue cover to cover since March 1983--yes, my love of fashion runs as deep as my love of art and celebrity gossip!!!  While FT did not actually choose to run the piece, they did select my painting of Madonna to run in an ad promoting Fashion Television.  The ad states that FT features todays innovators in art, then shows a full screen shot of Her Madgesty.  I almost fell on the floor the first time I saw it!

Alison and her crew from The Village Gallery brought Her Madgesty and one of my abstract pieces to her booth at the Interior Design Show (IDS) in January 2010.  Alison said that so many people approached the booth, recognizing the Madonna painting.  They recognized it either from the FT commercial or when Alison took Her Madgesty and Oh Bama. to a segment she did with Breakfast Television in late October 2009.  Alison works tirelessly to promote her artists and I am forever indebted to her.

The online magazine Alternavox.net attended IDS and wrote a review of the artwork there on the site.  The link is http://alternavox.net/2010/01/.  An excerpt from the piece by Alison Brown (seriously, just how many Alison's are there in my life right now????):

Meandering through the myriad of booths and displays at this show my first stop was The Village Gallery.  I was interested to find out about their pop up art program “Art Beyond Walls,” that I had heard about happening across the city. When I found their booth I was immediately attracted to the art of   “Justine Fernie” whose vibrant work stands out among the more traditional art pieces in this show.

I met up with Alison Goodwin, owner of the Village Gallery and Art Beyond Walls, who told me all about their exciting new project. The Village Gallery has their permanent location in Mississauga   where they have been for the past seven years. Art Beyond Walls is their urban pop up gallery. The concept of it is to take the gallery on the road and have unique events in unique places.  Exceptionally talented artists from across North America are brought to Toronto and featured in an exciting venue. Each event will integrate music and performing art for an alternative art buying experience, with proceeds going toward an art related cause. Some of these art happenings are small events like a private dinner party with an artist. They recently did a unique event at a church on Berkeley with 3 artists and 300 guests and donated some work to an art related charity.

This innovative idea gives people the chance to look at art and talk about art in different types of spaces getting away from the traditional gallery space.

Art Beyond Walls started with a small group of artists. And now is expanding with new emerging artists, people who aren’t represented yet by large galleries, giving these artists a chance to expose their work to varied audiences in an unconventional way.  The Interior Design Show  gives The Village gallery the opportunity to meet with designers who will  purchase art for commercial properties.

The next in line in the series is a giant portrait of Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish.  It is currently drawn on canvas but I haven't had the time to start painting it, due to other painting commissions I have been working on since the fall.  Once I get to it, I've got some big, fabulous ideas for it.  LOTS of gold...

xx

J

The Non-Traditional Family Portrait

More and more so, it appears as though the family portrait is making a comeback in today's home design and decorating.  Not the stodgy old portraits of days of yesteryear so much (that said, it would be nice to have an original Rembrandt or Vermeer portrait in my own home!) but something new and current.  Photography is one route to go in to capture a moment in time.  Of course, my specialty is capturing that moment (or several moments in one image) on canvas.

The Fernie Family

2007

acrylic on canvas

48"w x 36"h

The above portrait is of my family--Sean, me, Tristan and Carter.  I painted this particular portrait a couple of years ago now and I am sort of ready to do a new one (especially now that I myself have hair again!).  Carter and Sean share a true familial resemblance, so I painted them both using only a palette knife and no brush.  I find that Tristan and I look more like each other, so we are painted with a brush. This portrait has been moved to several locations within our house and never fails to engage the viewer.

The Malobabic Family

2008

acrylic on canvas

36" w x 24" h

This portrait was commissioned by Carter's former junior kindergarten teacher, Danjela Malobabic.  Danjela has her own certain sort of style and gave me complete and utter artistic freedom with her portrait--she commissioned the portrait for her father for his birthday.  I LOVED painting this piece.   With absolutely no restrictions, I kind of went to town.  The resemblance between Danjela & her mother was amazing, so I chose to paint them both with more controlled brush strokes in a similar style.  Danjela's sister and father also shared a resemblance, but I chose to paint them in a more abstracted way--no realistic tendencies at all here.  I think Danjela's sister actually looks like a crazy Marie Antoinette sort of character.  Her mother's head is not anchored to a body (a floating ghost?  not scary though...) and Danjela's father's image is both in front of and behind Danjela.  Craziness--but it went over very well with the family.  I knew my lack of limitations and went with them!

Frank, Janine, Max & Maya

2007

acrylic on canvas

48" w x 36" h

This portrait was commissioned by our friends Frank & Janine.  Frank is a builder by trade and they live in the most fabulous, traditional home.  They chose to commission this piece for their dining room and have told us time and time again that it has instigated conversations too numerous to count in the dining room over dinner!  Maya was just a newborn at the time the piece was done, so it is kind of cool that she is represented that way.  Little Max with this mane of golden hair just had to be captured that way--halo and all.  I experimented a little with using sepia paint on Max's face.  It kind of gave a bit of an old school photographical element to the piece.

Ingrid & Natalie

2007

acrylic on canvas

24" w x 18" h

This is truly one of my favourite family portraits.  In the words of Dr. Seuss (and more recently by my old friend Sara Lanthier), "A family is a family no matter how small".  That says it all.

Shannon, Derek, Jordan and Callum

2006

acrylic on canvas

48" w x 36"h

This family portrait was commissioned fairly early on in my "family portrait" career.  Shannon approached me to paint this piece with one caveat--use no black.  That's just what I did.  Once again, Callum was a baby at the time this piece was done, so he is captured that way.

Alison and Her Family

2009

acrylic on canvas

36"w x 30"h

The portrait above was my most recent foray into family portraiture.  Alison was very free in her approach to the piece and just didn't want it "scary".  I painted her husband almost as an illustrated man--his skin looks tattooed.  Oh his glasses--I LOVE painting glasses in a portrait.  For some reason they sort of anchor the whole painting.  I blended the two boys right into their parents skin--from hence they came, right?  Alison actually does resemble a "Barbie" a little in person, so I chose to play that element up and keep her all glowing in gold, yellow & pink.  Note:  The little gold section at Alison's husband's chin just above her son's head was removed from the final painting--I just didn't re-photograph it after I painted over that section.  The gold just wasn't working for me.

Ahhhh, time for a night out.  Happy Saturday!

xx

J  

Landscapes

I have to admit that I have not ever been overly inspired to paint landscapes.  It's not that I don't find the great outdoors inspiring, it's just it never really appealed to me to try to capture any aspect of it.

In December 2008 I was approached by Sandy and André Lovell, after they attended a show of my work hosted by Leslie and Joe Battle.  André had an amazing photograph of a hammock that famously hangs between two huge old trees at their weekend home.  The interesting thing about the photograph to me was that it was taken in the dead of winter--not typical "hammock" swinging time.  I felt up to the challenge of painting my first true landscape piece.

The piece turned out to be a lot of fun.  Even though I used a lot of red in the painting, I do feel as though the viewer can tell that this painting depicts a blustery cold day in the dead of winter.  I chose to paint the trees in black as silhouettes against the background.  In the shadow area beneath the hammock, I painted several tiny areas made up of colourful squares.  This small area inspired ALL of my new abstract pieces--but I'll get to that story another day.

The Hammock

2008

acrylic on canvas

48" w x 36" h

commissioned by André and Sandy Lovell

I was absolutely thrilled with the result of this piece.  I actually entered it into an art competition with a group called the East Village Art Coalition in Des Moines, Iowa.  The piece made it into the finals!!  http://www.evacdsm.org

In November of 2009, I was contacted by Jill Johnson to create very special custom piece for her husband Mike for Christmas.  Jill had the idea of creating an abstract landscape piece based on her first date with Mike.  Jill gave me a bunch of photos to work from, each depicting the view of the breathtaking mountains in Vancouver that Jill and Mike stared at together on their first date.  In the bottom of the painting I've attempted to sort of blend in the back of Mike & Jill's heads, sitting on the wicker couch enjoying both the company and the view.

Clearly it was a first date that worked as Mike and Jill tied the knot in July 2009.  Jill surprised Mike with the portrait on Christmas Day 2009 and it was successfully shipped off to their home in Vancouver, BC in the beginning of 2010.

First Date

2009

acrylic on canvas

36" x 36"

commissioned by Jill Johnson

Children's Portraits

My most favourite projects are most definitely portraits.  I love trying to capture a moment of time of a specific person and most especially, children.  I have had the privilege of working on many, many portraits of children over the past several years.

Lucas & Zachary Carbonaro

2007

acrylic on canvas

48"w x 36"h

commissioned by Anna & David Carbonaro

The portrait above is of my friend Anna's two gorgeous boys, Lucas & Zachary.  Anna provided me with several pictures of both kids but the interesting thing about this portrait is that the photos were not current photos of the boys.  Anna chose her favourite pictures of her boys, from special times in their lives that were of particular significance to her.  Zachary's "Bob the Builder" shirt left an indellible image in Anna's head (can he fix it?) as did Lucas' day of eating LOTS of watermelon.  When picturing Zachary, the first thing that comes to my mind is his lucious, all encompassing smile which I tried to capture using sunny bright colours.  Lucas is slightly more reserved than Zachary, so I chose to paint him with a lot of my favourite blue, Phalo blue.  Anna has told me that the work is a great conversation piece.  She said that at first people do not necessarily recognize the portrait to be of her children--the longer people stare at it, the more the image and who it is of, becomes apparent.  It is my interpretation of what her children look like.

The Brady Children

2008

acrylic on canvas

4 x 16" squares

commissioned by Mark Brady

Another of my favourite children's portraits was for a local family made up of one big brother (Kieran) and the triplets (Neave, Seamus & Eamon), commissioned by Mark Brady for his wife Alison.  I had lots of photographs to work from and four amazingly bright personalities to try to show on canvas.  While I don't typically paint "natural" hair colour on my portraits unless I am asked to by a client, I couldn't help but paint the three boys with shades of brown and Neave with a crazy, fiery red.  Being the only girl in a sea of boys, she most certainly had to stand out (and from what I've heard, I don't think it's too hard for her to stand out!).  I haven't seen too much of Kieran lately but do see the triplets (and hear them) around the neighbourhood.  You cannot help but smile at the pure sight of them. 

Kieran Brady

2008

16" square

Neave Brady

2008

16" square

Seamus Brady

2008

16" square

Eamonn Brady

2008

16" square

I have lots more children's portraits to share with you another time.

xx

J

RIP Rebecca Montgomery

I just got home from work at lunchtime in the beginning of December 2007 when I noticed my sister-in-law Danielle had repeatedly been calling my home number.  I called her back and was told the horrible news.  Sean's 18 year old cousin had taken her own life.  It was beyond devastating for the whole family.

Rebecca was the loving sister to her 4 other siblings-Matt, Melissa, Luke and Mark- and to her parents Leslie and John, as well as scores of other family and friends. I hope to never attend a funeral again of someone so young.  The raw emotion was too much to bear.  What could I do to help?  Nothing, obviously.  Maybe I could paint a portrait of Rebecca for her family?  I didn't know if it was really an appropriate thing to do but I went ahead and did it anyway.

Painting that particular portrait was something that I thought would have been such a traumatic thing to do. In fact it was just the opposite.  I'm not an overly spiritual or religious person but while I painted that portrait, I had a full on dialogue with Rebecca.  Of course I asked her why, to which I did not get any answers.  I most honestly did feel her presence while painting her and it wasn't sad--she encouraged me to finish the portrait.  The painting was not a struggle for me at all--I think Rebecca may have even art directed me.  When I was in university and full of drama over every potential "relationship" that didn't work, I'd cry and cry.  I painted a piece of my doll Lucy (more on her another day) sitting in a sea of tears.  Not until I painted the portrait of Rebecca did I realize the cathartic power of art.  It was a way of honouring  Rebecca's life while getting some of my sad, sad feelings out on canvas.

It was difficult giving the portrait to Les and John just after Christmas that year.  I think it was difficult for them to accept it at the time as well.  Since then, both Les and John have told me that they have hung the portrait up and that it has given them some comfort.  As I said before, I felt powerless to help but I also felt so strongly about painting her.

Rebecca is thought about and missed by her family everyday.  While I didn't know Rebecca that well, she most definitely made an impression on me. She will most definitely not be forgotten.  RIP Rebecca.

RIP Rebecca Montgomery

2007

acrylic on canvas

16" square