Jenny Watson Wings of desire 1
When I stand in front of this extraordinary painting it speaks to all my senses. Firstly, the raw surface and immediacy of paint place me in an open internal threshold – I BELIEVE these marks. I trust this work.
In my experience, Jenny Watson, an audacious, brilliant painter, allows first strokes to simply BE. In this space, intention and vulnerability speak deeply to the other, creating their own intoxicating collision of the naive and the masterful.
A woman-self-longing-so-deep that wings spring from the protagonist’s back, speaks directly to my own indescribably intimate, inner worlds of desire. Beyond explanation I feel like I understand this work from my lived experience as a woman. From my earliest memories, my most recurring dream (one aching with longing) is one where I am flying but, mostly, cannot rise (no matter how extreme my exertion) higher than just a metre or two from the surface of the earth. Here, pleasure, fear and extreme frustration exist in equal measures.
An encounter with this work is a gift, connecting me to another woman’s language – mysterious, transcendent, unapologetic, private and exposed. I bow down.
