'PAINT A BLACK HOLE BLACKER - ST. VINCENT' Oil on Canvas Board
Dimension: 16" x 12"
Certification of Authenticity: Apricus Art Collection
Signature: Signed by Artist
"Paint a Black Hole Blacker" by Elea Jane is a deeply expressive oil on canvas board that captures the viewer with its emotional intensity. The piece is characterized by a strong use of color and bold brushstrokes, creating a palpable sense of texture and movement.
The subject's visage is the central focus of the composition, rendered with a level of detail that captures a raw and poignant expressiveness. The eyes, wide and engaging, are windows to an internal struggle or profound depth of emotion, underscored by the dark circles and the intense gaze. The use of contrasting colors around the eyes accentuates their impact and draws the viewer into the subject's inner world.
The artist has skillfully manipulated the paint to create a sense of depth and form, with the flesh tones rendered in a series of layered hues that suggest the play of light and shadow across the subject's face. This technique, reminiscent of the chiaroscuro method, gives the subject a three-dimensional quality and a sense of living presence.
Surrounding the figure, the background and the subject's hair meld into abstract forms, with swirling colors that suggest turmoil and chaos. This abstract treatment contrasts with the realism of the face, creating a dichotomy that reflects the complexity of human emotion and the mind's inner workings.
The text "Paint a Black Hole Blacker" arches over the subject's head, adding a conceptual layer to the work. This phrase may invite contemplation on themes of darkness and the human condition, possibly alluding to the idea of intensifying or confronting one's deepest fears or sorrows.
Overall, this painting is a striking example of contemporary portraiture that uses classical techniques of oil painting to convey a modern and deeply psychological narrative. The artist's command of form, color, and texture results in a work that is both aesthetically compelling and thematically rich.
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BIOGRAPHY
Elea Jane is a self-taught artist currently based in Oxford. Having been unsettled from her home country and separated from her father as a child, her art often oscillates between atmospheres of home and horizon: the shadows that settle and flicker around comfort in the former, and the vertiginous void of swelling euphoria in latter. Her art focuses on the emergence of sensation and symbol which informs the complexity of subjectivity - whether through her portraits, which play with existing line and colour to bring out abstract forms speaking expressions beyond what’s prefigured and easily conceivable - or through her series of figurative dreamscapes reminiscent of fairy tales and surrealist art, laden with overtly symbolic, conflicting imagery and inspired by the spirit of collage and graffiti, mapping out the subject’s mind in the influx of information of its surroundings.
Having recently emerged from a years-long abusive relationship, Elea also uses the work as a reappropriation of self and sexuality. The trauma suffered from the abuse left the artist with severe problems with speech; the language constructed through her art, that private space that fluctuates between reality and imagination, through sensation, allowed her to take back control of her own voice. She has exhibited in Paris, has completed dozens of portrait commissions since she began painting three years ago, and her portraits are featured in the interview book Follow for Now vol. 2. by Roy Christopher. She lives in the Chilterns with her sister and her cat, Mia.