Chantal+Joffe

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 * [[image:cjoffe.jpg width="449" height="290" caption="Chantal Joffe in her studio" link="@http://epub01.publitas.nl/46/69/magazine.php#/spreadview/16/"]] || =Chantal Joffe =

says,"I paint in oils and it is a dirty medium. It's sticky, it gets in your hair, on your clothes and it's impossible to get off. Even keeping paintbrushes clean is a challenge. The first time I used oils was at school. I was copying a Rembrandt and the results were this grubby mess. It was the difficulty I found endlessly appealing and I wanted to learn how to control it. When I walk past Central Saint Martins college of art on Charing Cross Road I get that waft of oil paint from the building. It is a dusty, acrid, warm smell and it never tto give me a thrill. If you didn't like the smell, you'd never paint in oils." ||


 * = Chantal Joffe =

** Born in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England (UK) 1969 ** ** Glasgow School of Art in 1988 ** Lives and works in London, England **  "I have to paint to have ideas; it could be a painting of a box of tea or anything lying around the studio. It's about finding your way into your own brain." Joffe's works celebrate the female form, she says “It’s because I think about women and their thoughts and ideas, and I suppose when I’m painting them I’m getting to be them, in a sense...I really love painting women. Their bodies, their clothes—it all interests me, whereas men really don’t that much, in a way."  Many of her images come from shots in fashion magazines and photos of friends. Joffe is not a realist. She distorts the women in her frames for ultimate psychological effect using her works to emphasize the psychological relations of her characters to one another and to the viewer. A reviewer said of her “big rude paintings” that “she paints with a kind of easy control – effortless without being slick.” He further points out that her paintings may give an initial impression of simplicity, charm, or childishness, but “they have an unsettling quality which gives the exhibition an odd, rather menacing mood.”  Her paintings can be huge...with 10 feet tall canvases causing her process to be very physical, including using scaffolding.   Unlike easel paintings, they could not easily be stepped back from to survey progress. As a result, the paint seems to have had as much control over the outcome as the artist; often a drip or a brushstroke creates a dynamic that could never have been premeditated. Her distinctive style of painting offers an uncompromising sense of power, complexity and impetus to the female figures she portrays. The direct and liquid painting style has the effect of filling her subjects with personality. The images possess an alarming humor; highly enjoyable and strangely provoking. || ||


 * > [[image:chantal_joffe_black_camisole.jpg width="269" height="676" align="center" caption="Black Camisole 2004 Oil on board 305 x 124 cm" link="@http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/chantal_joffe_black_camisole.htm"]]

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