Jade Connolly

Jade Connolly (b.1998) Blackburn. Currently living in London. Jade Connolly deals with the dynamics of interior space and is interested in the passages, rooms, and transitional spaces within the inhabited home. Her work investigates psychological spaces and explores the meanings behind different rooms and transitional spaces. Jade likes to experiment with her mark-making ranging from delicate shallow fields of intense colour to flat opaque gestural brushstrokes. Painted in a range of saturated and muted tones of mostly blue, green, and yellow, Jade’s latest series depicts rooms and passageways from her childhood home, reflecting the conflicting feelings of calmness and anxiety resulting from different lived experiences. In addition to her paintings, Jade has made quick painterly studies of interiors in both ink and watercolour, again focusing on the environment she knows best. The relationship between the artist and subject is vital and the role of the viewer has become central to Jade’s work, they become a witness, an observer. The lack of details invites the spectator to complete the image by speculating on past and impending events. She infuses her paintings of desolate interiors with a cinematic aspect and an appreciation of light and shade which contributes to a significant sense of isolation. Jade has long been fascinated with the work of the French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard and is inspired by painters such as Tim Eitel, Lois Dodd, Paul Winstanley, Vermeer, and Hammershøi.