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Born and educated in Britain,
earning a BA in fine art (painting) at Winchester School
of Art, GB, and an art teacher’s certificate, Brighton,
GB, artist Jean Meyer has spent most of her adult life in
Italy, an influence that is reflected in her works. While
she attributes her series on guardian angels as a tribute
to my own, sorely overworked one, her "angels"
show a great range of differing aspects of strength and
evoke a variety of emotional states. Beyond their significance
as emblems of guidance and protection, they are symbols
of personal identity and a kind of dramatized response to
her feelings. In Fear No Evil, a little girl -
perhaps a self-portrait - walks along a sidewalk, painted
nostalgically as though with aged sepia and muted blue and
red, beneath the vivid turquoise and golden wing of her
own guardian angel.
For Meyer, there are two sources for the
images she creates: "two ‘nudges’ that
get me reaching for a pencil or brush in reaction: one is
the painful side of living, the other is the physical beauty
that nonetheless accompanies us. Making pictures enables
me to absorb and deal with the first, thus also rendering
it less destructive. It also gives me the means of celebrating
the second, in the best way I know how."
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