Susan Jamison

Gallery Affiliations: Page Bond Gallery, The George Gallery

Region: South

Website: http://www.susanjamison.com

City / State: Moneta, VA

My egg tempera paintings feature a female figure whose body is decorated with a hot pink, flowery, pattern reminiscent of embroidery that associates her with extreme femininity. The paintings incorporate plants and animals, domestic objects and symbols that reference culturally familiar stories and images. Medical illustrations of the head are appropriated and modified into archetypal images of women in a dream state. The animals and plants are chosen for their symbolic associations and lend the female figures a contemporary, feminist inspired Snow White character. My work is informed by a wide range of sources including Fairy Tales, Renaissance portraiture, scientific, botanical and avian illustration and Persian miniatures.

My most recent paintings take inspiration from the sweetness and delicacy of Indian Kama Sutra illustrations, where the art of sex is portrayed as a spiritual practice and there is balance and harmony between people in coupling. In my images, animals walk around the couples in their passion, mostly indifferent to the activity taking place