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Bobbie Jansen — painting, still life

The Arts Center Exhibitions:

• 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011
• Outside/Inside, Main Gallery, Jun/Jul 2010
• 'Where Birds Dream' Winter Show and Silent Auction, 2010

Bobbie Jansen is living and working in the Willamette Valley. She has worked in an expressive style and a darker pallet on still lives of various nature. Bird cages, candles sticks, chairs as well as crows and other -quite often dead- birds have been reoccurring motifs in her work. Currently she has an extensive series of shoes.

Artist's Statement, 'Pressure Relief' - 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011

This portal is not an entrance or a doorway but a window, an exit window. The pressure gauge is symbolic of all of the pressure from human activities that are compounding and affecting the natural world every day. The escape through this portal (a very small portal) is only in my imagination. I know it does not exist, yet I wish it did.

Biologists all around the world are saying that the pressures on our natural world will end life for 50% of all species on the planet by the year 2050 if left unchecked. So far we are not relieving the pressure but increasing it. In this piece the bird is transforming into something that cannot be destroyed as he passes through the window, and the pressure gauge finally reads zero. I have gone through all of the normal processes of grief about this, Anger, Frustration, Sadness, Withdrawal and then surrender. I feel helpless as I try to affect change writing letters, getting signatures  but watch it continually get worse anyway. Apathy threatens to overwhelm me. This portal is a place to remember the amazing spirit of our natural world.

Artist Statement, Outside/Inside, Main Gallery, Jun/Jul 2010:

Painting the still life object grew out of my obsession with accurate drawing. I started out as a metal sculptor, where drawing was not really needed to be accurate.   I found at some point that what I wanted was to transform the object to solicit an emotional response and so to do that I found that the easiest way was to find objects that I had an emotional attachment to. The object becomes a narrative or a symbolic stand in for something else. I guess in a way Alchemy is the best description of what I am after.   April 23, 2010

Bobbie Jansen is represented in Oregon by Howard Hansen Gallery in Ashland and Augen Gallery in Portland

Visit Bobbie Jansen's website.