Love, the very essence of art
"With a painting, a sculpture, it's a love affair, I start, I love, I love... and then suddenly it doesn't go on, I hang on, until I love again."
These are Jane's words. She always sticks to them.
Love, that major and recurring theme in the history of art, is filial, it is romantic, fraternal, forbidden, and often hidden, it is the sanctuary of multiple artistic symbols. In Jane Gemayel's work, it is omnipresent, it is the flash of her pencil strokes. Love is the motor of her art, it triggers her imagination and is expressed in a thousand ways.
If we take the historical foundations, you are undoubtedly familiar with all the classic icons of love and their depictions. The most famous ones, with Cupid, the famous Venus, swans, the red color. In the Middle Ages we talk about courtly love, in the Renaissance we paint unions, then Klimt offers us the painting of the famous Le Baiser at the beginning of the twentieth century. Later on, another art form came to the fore, and Doisneau captured the cliché of lovers kissing in the heart of a city in full bloom.
And then Jane, the Contemporary, who chooses love in every work she creates, who holds the infinity of love close to our eyes. Love inspires her, exalts her and she chooses to always portray it through women, because love is sorority, which is no longer a secret for you, but also sometimes through children, sometimes through union. She draws it with color or with sobriety. Jane expresses this powerful and lively feeling in all the art currents she has created, because love is multiple, it surrounds us constantly and if it does not, Jane calls it.
Let's take the woman, of all currents. In Jane Gemayel's work, she is omnipresent. The love of women is her basic vocabulary, her most primary expression, but also the infinity of her creation. Whatever the message, whatever the creative ambition behind the artwork you appreciate, Jane has chosen the woman because she loves her curves, her strength, her delicacy. Jane's classical inspirations of the female body can be found in each creation but her contemporary touch is revealed with a sculptural interpretation of the woman, through the love she has for these bodies. It's a subject Jane has mastered to perfection. Take Smiling Woman, where the reflection of delicacy is so well captured. The softness paired with the mystery of her face, with that uncertain but reliable look in the distance, and those bright, assertive colours. All of this cradled by a smile imperceptible to the less initiated.
The other side of the coin is that Jane's love is often filial. Women carrie the love of the world and translate it in this way : children are the future, they are the fruit of women who love. Between them, they carry the world. With Children, she conveys this message to anyone who looks at her drawing. A woman, arms towards the sky, with a solid body, feet embedded in the ground, who seems to be carrying several children, themselves floating above this woman, in serenity.
Above all, and this is perhaps the essence, love is symbolic. Each painting has its hidden detail, or not. Jane's art is full of symbols with multiple meanings. The love she has for the world she creates is expressed in the eyes, the crosses, the heart, the ornaments of every Jan'e’s paintings. That is also what love is, the symbol that we assign to it. It is our gaze, our cravings, our desires, it is what we make our own and what we emphasize.
Jane's poetry is an infinite song of love, it is what she sublimates from what surrounds her, from what inspires her, and she is not ready to stop sharing it with you.
