Jane Fielder’s work is varied in theme and tone, including for example
depictions of the heads of autistic children, dreams, explosions, flowers and
domestic scenes. In her presentations of urban landscapes, Victorian features
moved forward to the present (as in Bradford and surrounding towns), a range of
mood is likewise present. Her "Janescapes" register the disturbing
grid-like format of nineteenth century town life – though years have passed
history cannot be eradicated and the townscapes, though modified now, are still
memorials to a dehumanising past reality, as presented, for example in Dickens’
‘Hard Times’.
The
ominous mood, for instance, of ‘No Public Access’, where below a queerly
coloured sky washing flaps as if strung from former mill chimneys and windows
are pitch black, no people move in the streets, suggests that even in the
present things are not quite right, are humanly askance. The ominous note is
reinforced by the wording kaill (kill) on a piece of industrial equipment in the
foreground.
In other pictures roads are grid-locked; in ‘Firm Control Bingley’
behind a former mill chimney now labeled Damart – the plc
replaces the mill as oppressor – grimly coloured clouds as in a chemical
explosion feature. Worlds of oppression and disturbance mix with current scenes
of urban reality. The birds sitting on the wire in
‘Yellow Bra
Bingley’ testify to a way of being beyond the jammed cars, developer’s
equipment and black grids of houses; they may be omens, crows, or a chorus
derisory of past and present, or simply neutral, outside the human world, nature
(even in its preying aspect) creeping back in.
Part of this notion of something ominous interlaced with the ordinary is also
present in her picture of surveillance modules located in open countryside for
the use of
U.S. and U.K. military and secret services – the sitting down and
painting of the picture on location leading to the arrival of police vehicles
and the artist herself quizzed as to the reasons for her presence and choice of
subject.
Others of Jane Fielder’s pictures deal with relationships between men and
women as in
‘Lovers on Ducks’ or ‘Cooling Tower Lovers’. In the former
the idea of pursuit is prominent as the lovers ride past dream shapes, eerily
rooted trees and unfamiliar objects. The cooling towers become colourful, even
floral, as the lovers chase round them or dance. The need for ugliness to be
subverted is a theme.
Jane Fielder has lived in various locations in England, ranging from Kent to
Gloucestershire and to Yorkshire, as well as in Ireland. She has studied art in
Bradford, Dublin and Farnham. Her varied experiences as a teacher of disturbed
children, the elderly, injured people, as well as those of a mother and wife,
her specific sense of a locations latent meanings and notions of subversive
perception all contribute to her artistic expression.
The
ominous mood, for instance, of ‘No Public Access’, where below a queerly
coloured sky washing flaps as if strung from former mill chimneys and windows
are pitch black, no people move in the streets, suggests that even in the
present things are not quite right, are humanly askance. The ominous note is
reinforced by the wording kaill (kill) on a piece of industrial equipment in the
foreground.
In other pictures roads are grid-locked; in ‘Firm Control Bingley’
behind a former mill chimney now labeled Damart – the plc
replaces the mill as oppressor – grimly coloured clouds as in a chemical
explosion feature. Worlds of oppression and disturbance mix with current scenes
of urban reality. The birds sitting on the wire in
‘Yellow Bra
Bingley’ testify to a way of being beyond the jammed cars, developer’s
equipment and black grids of houses; they may be omens, crows, or a chorus
derisory of past and present, or simply neutral, outside the human world, nature
(even in its preying aspect) creeping back in.
U.S. and U.K. military and secret services – the sitting down and
painting of the picture on location leading to the arrival of police vehicles
and the artist herself quizzed as to the reasons for her presence and choice of
subject.
‘Lovers on Ducks’ or ‘Cooling Tower Lovers’
. In the former
the idea of pursuit is prominent as the lovers ride past dream shapes, eerily
rooted trees and unfamiliar objects. The cooling towers become colourful, even
floral, as the lovers chase round them or dance. The need for ugliness to be
subverted is a theme.