"A Gift from the Heart"
Thank you to David Giles for this beautiful piece he wrote for the Opening of my First Solo Art Exhibition:
"A Gift from the Heart" held from 27 April to 24 May 2025 at the David Giles Art Gallery in Fremantle, Western Australia.
"A Gift from the Heart" held from 27 April to 24 May 2025 at the David Giles Art Gallery in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Jewel Janan: “A Gift from the Heart”
Written by David Giles: 2025
Internationally Renowned Artist/Painting Teacher & Owner of the David Giles Art Gallery & Freedom School of Art, Fremantle, Western Australia
Jewel Janan paints from the heart. In fact really, she does everything from the heart. She lives in the heart. As we all could - and wouldn’t that be a wonder filled world. Certainly it would be one rich in creativity - because creativity is one of the keys to opening the heart. Creativity drives compassion, love, heart fullness. It is creativity that enables us to feel, to think, what happens if I do this? What happens if I feel this? Think this? The heart is filled from curiosity, openness, experimenting, embracing the unknown, embracing uncertainty.
In Jewel’s paintings we can see, we can feel the gift of the heart. The meditation, the curiosity, the patience, the love that goes into exploring and resolving and bringing to fruition the process of applying and moving paint around. She leads us in a dance across the canvas, a journey, an adventure into the patterns and mark-making that comes from opening the heart. Jewel’s paintings engage us, seduce us, draw us deep into soul space, into meeting with love, meeting with the heart. Her works are both enticing and meditative. They invite us into the minutiae of an unknown reality, an unknown space where we can find perhaps what is already in our heart. A certain playfulness, a certain fluttering, a certain lightness of being.
When you watch Jewel paint it is surprising to see the struggles, the dead ends, the difficulties that go into finding that way through to that moment of ah ha. She does it with consummate patience, diligence, engagement, like caring for an infant. It is surprising because the finished paintings look so perfect, so easy, so relaxed and at home with themselves. Little evidence of the trials and tribulations and toil that went into creating such harmony.
Coming from a counselling healing background, Jewel is no stranger to empathy, to engagement, to reaching out. In her art she invites us into her personal world, her inner world, her private world, the world of her heart. It is an invitation that senses respect, demands a sense of time, a sense of reverence even as we enter into these works, enter into the gift of the heart, the gift of creativity, the gift of opening our minds and our hearts to the complexity of the old journey. A complexity we can see acted out in the lines, marks, washes, vibrations, and lyricism of applying paint to canvas. How amazing that painting can achieve so much. So powerfully, so convincingly.
To achieve this requires gentleness, fragility, vulnerability. And openness and courage. To let go of fear of failure and embrace the mystery and magic of creativity is a journey worth embarking on. Jewel shows us the way, a way of opening the heart, letting go of judgement, loving yourself and the creative genius inside you and just honouring oneself. Feeling the self inside that is the self outside. Feeling the heart as part of beating heart of the universe.
I feel privileged to know Jewel Janan. She is an artist after my own heart. True to her own self, open, kind and willing to commit it all to canvas to show us all.
Written by David Giles: 2025
Internationally Renowned Artist/Painting Teacher & Owner of the David Giles Art Gallery & Freedom School of Art, Fremantle, Western Australia
Jewel Janan paints from the heart. In fact really, she does everything from the heart. She lives in the heart. As we all could - and wouldn’t that be a wonder filled world. Certainly it would be one rich in creativity - because creativity is one of the keys to opening the heart. Creativity drives compassion, love, heart fullness. It is creativity that enables us to feel, to think, what happens if I do this? What happens if I feel this? Think this? The heart is filled from curiosity, openness, experimenting, embracing the unknown, embracing uncertainty.
In Jewel’s paintings we can see, we can feel the gift of the heart. The meditation, the curiosity, the patience, the love that goes into exploring and resolving and bringing to fruition the process of applying and moving paint around. She leads us in a dance across the canvas, a journey, an adventure into the patterns and mark-making that comes from opening the heart. Jewel’s paintings engage us, seduce us, draw us deep into soul space, into meeting with love, meeting with the heart. Her works are both enticing and meditative. They invite us into the minutiae of an unknown reality, an unknown space where we can find perhaps what is already in our heart. A certain playfulness, a certain fluttering, a certain lightness of being.
When you watch Jewel paint it is surprising to see the struggles, the dead ends, the difficulties that go into finding that way through to that moment of ah ha. She does it with consummate patience, diligence, engagement, like caring for an infant. It is surprising because the finished paintings look so perfect, so easy, so relaxed and at home with themselves. Little evidence of the trials and tribulations and toil that went into creating such harmony.
Coming from a counselling healing background, Jewel is no stranger to empathy, to engagement, to reaching out. In her art she invites us into her personal world, her inner world, her private world, the world of her heart. It is an invitation that senses respect, demands a sense of time, a sense of reverence even as we enter into these works, enter into the gift of the heart, the gift of creativity, the gift of opening our minds and our hearts to the complexity of the old journey. A complexity we can see acted out in the lines, marks, washes, vibrations, and lyricism of applying paint to canvas. How amazing that painting can achieve so much. So powerfully, so convincingly.
To achieve this requires gentleness, fragility, vulnerability. And openness and courage. To let go of fear of failure and embrace the mystery and magic of creativity is a journey worth embarking on. Jewel shows us the way, a way of opening the heart, letting go of judgement, loving yourself and the creative genius inside you and just honouring oneself. Feeling the self inside that is the self outside. Feeling the heart as part of beating heart of the universe.
I feel privileged to know Jewel Janan. She is an artist after my own heart. True to her own self, open, kind and willing to commit it all to canvas to show us all.
|
You Can See Photos of Some of Jewel's Paintings and Prints at: https://www.jeweljanan.com/jewel-janan-paintings.html |
