JENNIFER TROUTON AND SIAN COSTELLO DISCUSS THEIR APPROACHES TO PAINTING AND THEIR RESPECTIVE EXHIBITIONS AT ORMSTON HOUSE.
Jennifer Trouton: My painting practice is informed by my interest in the historical devaluing of female artists and the genres which they, through lack of access, were forced to accept. Many years ago, I read a quote by founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds: “Let men busy themselves with all that has to do with great art… let women occupy themselves with… the painting of flowers.”1 This propelled me towards female painters like Vanessa Bell, Angelica Kauffman, and Rachel Ruysch. This in turn led to my making of coded contemporary still life paintings that narrate the history of women’s lived experiences through the objects and spaces that bore witness to their lives. I believe our practices have feminist concerns at their core, but where I explore spaces and objects, you explore the female form, reframing its role in art history.
Sian Costello: I love how your use of the still life reflects simultaneously on both the absence and the ever-presence of women throughout art history and contemporary society. I frequently use paintings from the Baroque and Rococo periods as reference material and am fascinated by the role of the artist’s model as a widely uncredited collaborator in the creation of these acclaimed and influential works of art. I see this as an extension of the wider trivialisation of feminine labour. In my paintings, I use my own body as model to reassess the physical work involved in maintaining a pose, and inverting the established power dynamic between artist, model, and viewer.
JT: I spend months, even years, researching and developing my imagery before approaching a canvas. For me, beginning the painting feels like a final step, as most of the decision-making has already been done. But I look at your work and get a real sense of energy and playfulness, which makes me think that the physical act of painting is much closer to the start of your creative process. Your brushstrokes suggest a more intuitive approach.
SC: I am always trying to paint from the gut. I’m usually unsure of how the painting is going to look at the end, but rather, I enjoy the process of figuring out how to respond to each new mark laid down. I build my paintings in layers, from a pastel under drawing on raw canvas, through to the gesso, and then the oil paint has to be strategically placed on the more primed areas. It’s my way of holding on to that impulse to paint through every stage of the making, but it can also result in a heap of frustration and lost time. Sometimes I wish I had a more reliable process, but in all honesty, I think I’d start breaking away from it as soon as I’d have it established!
JT: Titles are something we both agree are important in the presentation of our work. I find untitled works frustrating and even disappointing. For me, titles are the first signpost in reading an image. I think of my paintings as maps and the titles are clues to be decoded. I spend a lot of time considering them. Sometimes they come at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the process, but they are never rushed or an afterthought.
SC: I’ve come to use titles as a way of signalling something abstract in my imagery. I like to use the sounds of the words like another brushstroke, a layer that engages the viewer’s tongue and triggers a memory, transporting them to somewhere other than in front of my painting. All the better if the effect is humorous; for example, my 2023 painting series, ‘Le Gubbeen’, was based on Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s late-Rococo painting, La Gimblette (1770). There is something very funny and indelicate about cheese.
JT: How do you feel about the role of beauty in your work? I often refer to my work as aesthetically pleasing, but rarely beautiful. I struggle with beauty as it is too often linked to femininity and so not seen as a serious artistic concern. Referring to something as beautiful can potentially diminish its strength and reduce it to a decorative craft, which the feminist in me abhors. I deliberately create attractive still life paintings and employ colour palettes that evoke a sense of nostalgia. This is to draw in my audience before asking them to also consider the uncomfortable realities contained within. The punch is contained within the beauty.
SC: The subject matter that I deal with directly engages with the pursuit of beauty in the history of figurative art. I’m interested in who benefits from the construction of beauty, and what happens when society turns on what it once held in esteemed ‘good taste’. I’m particularly pleased with a painting when I feel it’s teetering on the edge of something beautiful and something disgusting, like the sheen on a glossy head of hair, which upon closer inspection, appears greasy and unwashed.
JT: As an artist in my 50s, I’m keenly aware that my education and early career were electronically different from yours. I was unburdened by the wealth of information, imagery and opportunities that today’s superfast internet brings. And I’m not sure if I would have found my own style or voice in the context of all that external noise. As a Gen Z artist, how has the internet and social media impacted on your practice, for good or bad?
SC: I graduated at the beginning of the pandemic and so felt particularly vulnerable to the pressures of pleasing an audience and establishing a consistent brand early on. That being said, social media has been very kind to me, and opened up opportunities that I would never have been able to access without major art world connections in big cities. Things feel more democratic now, but I know it’s important to stay connected to real-world communities. I think that is key to maintaining any kind of longevity in the arts after college.
Jennifer Trouton is an artist based in Queen Street Studios in Belfast. Her forthcoming exhibition, ‘In Plain Sight’, will run at The RHA from 5 September to 5 October 2024.
jennifertrouton.com
Sian Costello is an artist who works from James Street Artists’ Studios in Limerick. Her recent solo exhibition, ‘Hot Child’, was presented at Ormston House from 26 July to 31 August 2024.
@siancostelloart
1 Norman Bryson, Looking At the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (London: Reaktion Books, 1990)
