Jenny Watson
Born 1951, Melbourne
White Painting: Margaret, 1975
synthetic polymer paint on cotton canvas
180cm x 180cm
Gift of Georges Australia Ltd., from Georges Invitation Art Prize, 1975
Image credit: Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Photographer: Ian Hill
Visual description:
This full-length portrait of a young woman fills the entire height of the canvas, but is surrounded on both sides by a large, white ‘empty’ background. The figure faces forward with arms resting straight at the sides and feet close together. She wears a sleeveless green top with thin straps and a light floral pattern, denim jeans. She has long fair hair falling behind her bare shoulders, blue eyes, and a neutral expression.
Curator’s insight:
In White Painting: Margaret, Jenny Watson presents a life-sized portrait of a friend in the centre of a flat, monochrome space, bringing together the seemingly disparate traditions of figurative realism and colour field painting. Exploring figuration at a time when abstraction was a dominant movement, and ensconced in the flourishing punk scene in Melbourne and London, in this period Watson also painted her then partner, the artist John Nixon, as well as Nick Cave and other members of the post-punk band The Boys Next Door in a similar approach. Watson’s more recent work also commonly features a single, female archetype or protagonist, often an alter ego of the artist herself. On the significance of mining her personal friendships and inner world in constructing her work, Watson has reflected:
"I decided to put in the whole shebang, the whole mess … Being human and particularly being a girl human, growing up in the suburbs. And I thought could that be an interesting topic. History seems to say, hell, yeah!"