Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Magic of Jeanne-Ming

24 x 36 mixed media board

I have been admiring the art work of Jeanne-Ming for a while now. She grew up in Taiwan. Her formative years were on Wu Fung road in the southern town of Chai Yi. She survived the eathquake of 1963 but many of her neighbors did not; she paints her neighbors.

Her technique is labor intensive but the results are nothing short of magical. Per Jeanne-Ming: She uses dry wall compound (used in America for finishing walls in homes) it is similar to plaster but more pourous. She lays it over boards and then she etches, sands, and carves, until she gets the picture she wants. Then she primes it very loosely so the high points take the primer but the low points don't. She stains the whole thing and suddenly, the picture appears. She later layers with acryics until she blocks in the basic painting. The last step is the faces and those she does in oil pastels and then varnish.

You can see more of her artwork on her blog: Wu Feng Road

7 comments:

Isabel said...

What a wonderful artist! Just went by her blog and truly enjoyed her art. Thanks for the link!

Tess Kincaid said...

Magical is right. I'm off to her blog...

Gabby said...

Wow. Astonishing. But your explanation about "how" she does it is like telling me how I might go about carrying a baby. (lol)

Unknown said...

What a talented artist.

Anonymous said...

Very cool.

Annie Coe said...

Her process is so much like mine, except I use venetain plaster. Funny how we work the same,but come up with such different work. Off to see more...

Prêt à Voyager said...

have you seen the movie "coraline" - these remind me of the figures in the movie.

anne