There comes a point when words are no longer enough in talking about the works of Jenny Matthews.
Either you get these paintings or you don’t. And if you do, and you love them, you can either spend hours analysing the details of petal and butterfly wing, leaf, stamen and bee leg; or you can step back and unashemedly go ‘Ooooh’ like a child at some particularly enchanting firework display.
Sorry if this isn’t cutting it as art criticism.
Matthews’ work is about taking delight in the decorative pleasures of natural and manmade colours, patterns, textures and forms. There isn’t, as far as I can tell, that much of a complicated back-story.
But what there is suffices. These works are beautifully achieved with minimum fuss.
Others – like ‘Wild Flower Bouquet from Strathdon’ (right) – introduce greater freedom in terms of abstract shapes, patterns, colour and compositional relations.
Others still – like ‘Grandfather's Chair’ (below) – also begin to show signs of an intriguing autobiographical element creeping into Matthews’ normally unexplained micro cosmos.
In short: however hard won such art’s brilliant realisation may be, the response of the viewer need not be complicated.
For this reviewer, enjoying Matthews’ work is mostly as simple and profoundly life-affirming as smiling up into a beam of spring sunshine. AM
Jenny Matthews’ solo exhibition Water and Colour continues at the Union Gallery (45 Broughton Street) until 2 June.
