LolaJovan.com
  • Home
  • ART
  • BLOG
  • Exhibits
    • The Downside of Lycanthropy
    • A Song for the Hunted
    • The Wild God
    • NUDGE - SHOVE
  • BOOKS

The Bony Residue of Their Lives

12/2/2017

6 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
"Semblance" (series of four) - mixed media on aquabord, each 6" x 6".  Inquiries.  Available at the Olive Stack Gallery.

“The children looked like remnants of themselves. Spectral. Some were naked to the waist. Many of them had sores on their faces. None had shoes. He could see the structures of them through their skin. The bony residue of their lives.”   -  writer Colum McCann

When I began this series of paintings, they were intended to become vibrant abstracts. The colors were there, the movement, the texture.  And then I began to see the faces.  A bit haunting, not fully formed but wanting to be seen.  Earlier in the week, when visiting the artist Alan Hall, I had the chance to peruse the book The Truth Behind the Irish Famine, by Jerry Mulvilhill, which Alan had on his dining room table.  I found the illustrations gritty and disturbing, perfectly suited for the subject and the raw emotion it creates.  I think they were lodged in my subconscious when I began painting.

There is evidence of the famine throughout Ireland.  It wasn't that long ago, really.  The mid 1800's, almost 100 years after America's independence and just a few years before the Emancipation Proclamation.  The Irish continue to examine and research and process the famine similar to how the U.S. continues to struggle with the legacy of slavery.  Some things cross over generations, and the weight is palpable.

My own mother was of Irish descent, and her father's family fled Ireland on one of the famine ships,  Standing here in the land of my maternal ancestry, I can feel the sadness fill up my boots and root me to the ground.  
Picture
Picture
Picture
6 Comments
Carol Edan link
12/2/2017 04:34:45 am

Chills ran through me reading your description of the images and of the Irish famine. These images could also be of all the sufferers past and present. The faces of the Syrian immigrants, the faces from the Holocaust. They are beautiful in their sad and haunting way!

Reply
jen
12/2/2017 07:20:33 am

Thank you for appreciating their beauty even in the sadness...as you said, it could be any of those suffering past or present, and we honor them by remembering.

Reply
Carl Stoveland
12/2/2017 01:38:42 pm

Haunting and beautiful.

Reply
jen
12/3/2017 02:28:25 am

thank you, Carl...these pieces are special to me. So moved by the stories.

Reply
Dotty Seiter link
12/4/2017 09:48:50 am

Powerful, Jen. Powerful riveting painting, powerful compelling backstory. Transfixing.

Reply
jen
12/4/2017 03:27:29 pm

Thank you, Dotty....I was the conduit. Those sweet victims wanted to be seen.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Lola Jovan

    Picture

    Get Mail!

    * indicates required
    /* real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups */

    Intuit Mailchimp

    Categories

    All
    An Unexpected Life
    Bones
    Bossy Pants
    Mischief And Malarkey
    Rewilding
    The Art Of Seeing
    The Inner Landscape
    The Weight Of Words

contact lola
Picture
Here's the blue wild, where
tiny dreamers ride beasts, speak
​ birdsong, hold the moon.

(by poet Mary W. Cox)
​


​Art prints available on request
  • Home
  • ART
  • BLOG
  • Exhibits
    • The Downside of Lycanthropy
    • A Song for the Hunted
    • The Wild God
    • NUDGE - SHOVE
  • BOOKS