Jan Gilbert - Celebrating the Beauty of Imperfection
by Sally Hansen
The Derry Studio is suffused with the golden warmth of nodding sunflowers beaming down from canvases of all sizes. Jan Gilbert admits, a shade ruefully, that she has become known locally as “the sunflower painter” since she embraced her painting fulltime a few years ago. “I like yellow,” she laughs.
She likes red and blue and every other colour of the rainbow too, as evidenced by her vivid acrylics celebrating the rural beauty that surrounds her country studio. Particularly striking is an Ashton landscape featuring a riot of wildflowers in the foreground. Another, aptly named “Dancing Tulips,” evinces her wonderful freedom with colour. That freedom illuminates her portrayals of all the seasons. It is especially striking in her winter landscapes where she finds warmth in the glow of the sunset on frozen Ontario fields. Her snowy “Crooked Fence” is lush with deep, rich earth tones against the intense blues, violets, indigos and fuchsias of an evening sky and snowy shadows.
Wabi-sabi
Gilbert succeeds brilliantly in capturing and sharing her profound love of nature. Each work reveals the emotional purity of her connection to her subject. Her artistic inclination is toward the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and a concept of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” (as defined by Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers). She tells me, “I feel very strongly about embracing imperfection — both in your subjects, and in your own rendition of them. I love the challenge of learning, and I love the ‘high’ of getting it right.”
The sunflowers she chooses to paint look like they have lived a little — suffered a bit too much rain, been lucky enough to have lived past their “best-before” date. Her renditions may be imperfect by her own standards, but her success confirms that she is indeed getting it right. Her paintings of gloriously imperfect sunflowers have earned her a backlog of commissions and repeat customers. Her other naturally imperfect and perfectly natural subjects fare equally well in her loving and exuberant embrace. “When I have an emotional reaction to something, I have to do something about it,” she explains. “I’m not trying to change the world; I’m just reveling in its beauty.”
Hey Dairy, Derry
Gilbert’s love of nature is bone deep. She was raised on a dairy farm near North Bay, and remembers loving her “job” of accompanying the cows down country lanes and enjoying the daisies and the buttercups. Sometimes Jan wonders whether her love of art wasn’t heightened by the art deprivation she felt growing up. “We had music in the schools, but absolutely no art. I was always doodling and drawing, and really longed for art classes.” She went to Kemptville College to study Home Economics as a teenager, and later found a job at the Ottawa Civic Hospital as a Food Services Supervisor and then as a diet technician. She also worked as a food technician for the Federal Government in Ottawa.
In her entire life she has lived in a city for only five years, and both she and her husband Jeff, who was raised on a farm in Nova Scotia, couldn’t wait to move back to the country. The couple have been married for 42 years, and moved from Ashton to their present farm 32 years ago. When their heritage barn burned down, the couple built a replacement barn. Five years ago they converted their barn into a studio for Jan, and a picture framing shop for supportive husband Jeff. Jan’s painting now occupies a major portion of her time, and she is a member of both Arts Carleton Place and the Almonte & Area Artist’s Association.
She cites the all-day tutorials she attends regularly at the studio of mixed media artist Suzanne Warren Powell as having a wonderful influence on her work. She values the critiques provided by Powell (featured in June 2003) and other participating artists, and commends Powell’s ability “…to bring out the best in people. It is one thing to have the knowledge, but to be able to let each person develop without imposing your own tastes and preferences is a real gift.”
Gilbert’s other lifelong creative outlet is writing. When she travels, she packs her writing materials before she packs her clothes. While she was raising their son and daughter on the farm, Jan wrote a food column for the Stittsville News and also for the Carleton Place Canadian. As part of the “back to the land” movement in the 70’s, she began teaching cooking classes at her home and in church basements, urging busy housewives to embrace the new health foods becoming popular at the time. “I remember sitting writing about cooking while my own dinner was burning on the stove,” she confides.
For several years she met weekly with about ten other writers in a Monday morning writers’ club. Now she participates in a monthly writing critique group, and has completed about one third of a novel. Recently she has turned to poetry to fulfill her monthly “assignments”.
After reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, Jan followed the author’s advice and embarked on a daily ritual of writing in her “Morning Pages Journal.” She finds it relaxing and creatively stimulating. She also practices Taoist Tai Chi with Jeff, who has been an instructor for six years. She credits the moving meditation with increasing her confidence in expressing herself through both her painting and her writing.
Drop in at Surrounding Memories Picture Framing Studio & Gallery at 77 Bridge St. in Carleton Place (257-1301) to experience how Jan Gilbert’s art can connect you to the real world and brighten up this particularly dreary summer. In November her works will be on display at Ballygiblin’s Restaurant & Pub at 151 Bridge Street in Carleton Place (253-7400). To add to your own collection, give Jan a call at 257-1069 or contact her via email to set up a visit to The Derry Studio near Ashton.