Milli Jannides

As source material for my paintings I copy down short quotations that appeal to me in the novels I read, collecting them as I would postcards from museums, or ‘notes to self’ in a journal, without knowing exactly how or when they will be used. Frequently, the quotations I am drawn to parallel a relationship between the emotional landscape of a character with a physical landscape or environment. They have come to act as both triggers and anchors for the work that I do in studio, which takes the shape of small quick sketches, as well as oil paintings of varying sizes painted directly on to the canvas from my imagination. Through this process, in an oblique fashion, my own personal responses to everyday life are given form. The finished paintings: mumbling, inviting, impervious to viewers looking for their origins; are those that travel away from the quotation, taking an idiosyncratic journey to find their own internal logic.

'I knew words were like chains, they held me back; and like walls with holes in them. Reality kept rushing through; and yet I could not get out to fully exist in it. This interpreting what I struggled to remember feeling; the act of description taints the description.' (John Fowles, The Magus, p. 239)