Jill Lewis
200 Days
2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152cm x 152cm
Courtesy the artist
'I don't usually paint in this way! But living alone through extensive Melbourne lockdowns, I've found myself inventing people on the canvas, as if to have human companionship. There is a scientist, a mother-earth figure, a stranger, a monkey and a fortune-teller in my studio...
'To express this uneasy time in the world, I've concocted unusual people, and combined the fairly flattened areas of costume and vegetation, with the more three dimensional rendering of faces.
'That said, familiarity and comfort is sought through the presence of pattern and plant forms. The monkey seems to represent our collective bewilderment.'