A STUDENT'S VIEW
by Joy West
“ You must be willing to let go of the picture you wanted to paint for the picture that wants to be painted, “ she had said in those early days of my taking watercolor classes from her. And now, six years later, Jessel Miller exemplifies those words, that philosophy, in spades.
I have been privileged to be behind the scenes, to see and discuss the stages in allowing the “picture that wants to be painted “to fully come forth. I have witnessed the obliteration of specific aspects of a painting, sometimes painstakingly created over days, with the swipe of a palette knife, the flick of new paint, the arrival of a new blank spot to paint “what wants to be painted.“
More than ever, Jessel has allowed herself to be the vessel, the conveyor, the channel through which pictorial and sometimes written words and symbols, essences, windows into other perspectives and realms can be viewed.
When at last she is finished, willing to put the paint brush down for the last time on the piece in front of her, the results may look deceptively simple, balanced in position and color, a pristine slice of what is or could be, of a cohesive message that breathes and lets the viewer breathe with it. Yet I am privy to wonderful incarnations, beautiful figures and forms worthy of their own moments, sacrificed in the drive and focus of surrendering to the purity and the authenticity not of the picture she thought she would paint, but of one that was asking to be painted.
And we, the viewers, are richer for it.
by Joy West
“ You must be willing to let go of the picture you wanted to paint for the picture that wants to be painted, “ she had said in those early days of my taking watercolor classes from her. And now, six years later, Jessel Miller exemplifies those words, that philosophy, in spades.
I have been privileged to be behind the scenes, to see and discuss the stages in allowing the “picture that wants to be painted “to fully come forth. I have witnessed the obliteration of specific aspects of a painting, sometimes painstakingly created over days, with the swipe of a palette knife, the flick of new paint, the arrival of a new blank spot to paint “what wants to be painted.“
More than ever, Jessel has allowed herself to be the vessel, the conveyor, the channel through which pictorial and sometimes written words and symbols, essences, windows into other perspectives and realms can be viewed.
When at last she is finished, willing to put the paint brush down for the last time on the piece in front of her, the results may look deceptively simple, balanced in position and color, a pristine slice of what is or could be, of a cohesive message that breathes and lets the viewer breathe with it. Yet I am privy to wonderful incarnations, beautiful figures and forms worthy of their own moments, sacrificed in the drive and focus of surrendering to the purity and the authenticity not of the picture she thought she would paint, but of one that was asking to be painted.
And we, the viewers, are richer for it.
