Jen­ny Watson
Works made in Sri Lanka

I have explored a per­son­al inte­ri­or since the ear­ly 1980’s. I have used trav­el as a kind of Aladdin’s cave in terms of sourc­ing local fab­rics. There is a cul­tur­al quo­tient in these fab­rics out­side the world of depart­ment stores; par­tic­u­lar­ly in the nego­ti­a­tion, the colours and the actu­al pur­pose they were imag­ined for. These works were inspired by a mon­th’s res­i­den­cy in Sri Lan­ka at an art foun­da­tion six hours north of Colom­bo and six weeks pri­or to the Tsuna­mi. It is with plea­sure I now present them at Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Jen­ny Watson

Over the past thir­ty years Jen­ny Wat­son has honed her per­son­al iconog­ra­phy. Through her paint­ings we are offered a lex­i­con of hors­es, pets, friends, found phras­es and every­day ephemera, togeth­er build­ing a selec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the artist. Each work can be read as a con­junc­tion of its tex­tu­al and visu­al motifs, togeth­er with its title, but also in ref­er­ence to her pre­ced­ing body of work. The inter­re­la­tion of these dif­fer­ent ele­ments in Wat­son’s work is not arbi­trary. Rather, they are con­nect­ed much as dif­fer­ent ele­ments in our lives are, at times strong­ly inter-relat­ed yet at oth­er times con­nec­tions can be fleet­ing or fragmentary.