JAYNE FOSTER | PORTRAITS OF UNKNOWN SITTERS

JAYNE FOSTER | PORTRAITS OF UNKNOWN SITTERS

Jayne Foster grew up in a small town just north of London. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in fashion and textiles at Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication before attending the Royal College of Art, from where she gained her Master’s degree in Womenswear Design.
At the Royal College of Art, she explored a multitude of art and design techniques, focusing on drawing, illustration, and textiles. Whilst working as a fashion designer in London, she continued to study printmaking at Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design, where she discovered the etching press and embarked upon a new approach to her work.
After moving to California in 2012, Jayne focused on her love of printmaking, studying the craft’s technical aspects in great detail and developing a signature approach, which is evident in her contemporary work. Jayne’s extensive knowledge and experience of fashion, textiles, and illustration form the backbone of her practice, and through her work, explores themes of voyeurism, portraiture, and representations of the female form, leaning heavily on the richness of fashion and representations of femininity.
Her work really started to focus on her techniques of using printmaking when she became an Artist in Residence at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. It was here that she really started the possibilities of methods and techniques.

JAYNE FOSTER

“This series of works approach portraiture in a nontraditional way. Being a great admirer of the work of artists such as Francis Bacon with the distorted, twisted portraits to the work of Cindy Sherman and Marlene Dumas where identity is explored. Jayne’s collection of work brings together abstracted female portraits that explore femininity, identity, and the power of clothing to portray or camouflage different versions of oneself.
In this series of work, the portraits are of an unknown person or sitter. There are hints of recognizable elements in each portrait; a suggestion of a face, some jewelry, or semi identifiable aspects of clothing. Jayne is still very much in love with fashion and brings this continually into her work. Showing how we adorn ourselves with clothing to project our different and ever-changing moods.
Although abstract, each composition is grounded in a strong female form, giving each unknown portrait a beguiling and individual sense of identity.
Each printed portrait is made using a combination of machine techniques and mixed media.
This creates a multilayered visual effect that brings to mind the multi-faceted personalities within each of us. Using an etching press and single-use techniques to create monotypes makes each portrait original and unique. “

Read the full article on Art Market Magazine Issue #53