JENNI MAURICE-GREEN

artist teacher facilitator

Jenni is a native Capetonian currently living in the KZN Midlands. She studied a BA Fine Art (Ed) degree through Stellenbosch University (1993) majoring in Painting and Art Education although she barely painted for close on 20 years on finishing it. Having a longstanding interest in art therapy as a career path and a personal need for emotional healing, Jenni went on to complete her Honours degree in Psychology in 2003. She made friends with her paintbrushes again in 2012 as she found ways to express much of what she was feeling through playing with art. Her early Rembrandtesque style gave way to explosions of texture and colour in the form of abstracts that have managed to shock her over-active critic into a long-awaited silence. From needing to be in a good place emotionally to paint, she now paints to find that good place and hopes that she can encourage others to do the same.

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Jenni paints primarily in oils and mixed media with her subject matter ranging from intuitive abstract responses to music and the moods of the world around her to expressive portraits of animals and people. The art she has made in the past few years is charged with emotion and colour. It documents her process of personal growth, change and inner healing as seen through her move from a tight, controlled and wildly detailed manner of painting to a more expressive and exploratory one that allows for the playfulness of creativity. She currently heads up the Visual Arts Department at a prestigious all boys, all-boarding high school in the country, and encourages others to grow their creativity through informal studio sessions at her home and through the facilitation of workshops in her mixed media technique. She hopes to open her family cottage on the wild Eastern Cape coast to creative retreats in the near future.

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

"I am fascinated by the healing and restoration that takes place through the process of making art. Painting is a time of play for me with my work directly influenced by my senses. Most of my work is purely intuitive as I play with the textures, shapes and forms I experience through the physical, emotional and spiritual worlds around me. I’m inspired by the beauty of the imperfect, the intricacy of the extreme close-up and the power of nature. My work visually documents the movement of a song or water or a sense of peace as these grow into a dance of pattern that I can get lost in. I feel music and the sounds and smells of nature as colour and movement. Through my paintings I try to reconstruct this dance of sensory experience in the hope that I find a still, quiet space in the busyness of today’s world."