Kunstenaar Jo Oakley
Jo Oakley
“Searching my heart for it’s true sorrow.
This is the thing I find to be
That I am weary of words an people
Sick of the city
Wanting the sea’
A poem by Edna St. Vincent Millais
Although written in the early 1900s these words echo my feelings about
living in the city and yearning to spend time at my beach hut on the
southeast coast today. My new collection of paintings are about this experience.
As well as the observations in the landscape I have worked on capturing two different aspects
of how time is spent there. Collecting treasures from the shore, reading, writing an watching.
The interior has its own story, a mixture of objects inherited from past owners and my own addments’, fading fabrics of times gone by.
The paintings are on canvas, the surface is built up and scraped away.
Subtleties in this process help to create the richness and depth that communicates these
different aspects for me.