Jillian Green has had a long and abiding interest in early Christian art and architecture.
This has taken many forms in her artworks over the past 25 years, from exquisitely detailed portrait drawings in pencil to luminous painted patterns that recall the blue tiles found in Islamic architecture.
She commenced the artworks for this exhibition after completing a residential icon painting course in a Greek Orthodox monastery in Bethlehem, in 2014. She described this location as a surprisingly beautiful and peaceful place considering it was just meters from a checkpoint in the wall that divides Jerusalem from Palestine. The icon course revealed itself to be a very traditional and strict theological discipline, which although deeply inspiring, was not one that she will become a devotee of. Jillian’s underlying reason to visit Bethlehem was to submerge herself in the rich history of this unique place, and to view the early Christian artworks in and around the monastery, Bethlehem and Israel.
Back in Australia she found herself again contemplating what form her contemporary response to this early Christian art could take. Her solution came in the form of vessels: Beautifully painted terracotta pots. She doesn’t think of them as pots though, but rather “they’re physical representations of emptiness, receptivity, and ‘poverty of spirit’. They describe a space; they’re not in any way fancy or special but are purposely plain, humble objects. Like the supports used for traditional icon writing, they are made of a lasting and very stable material. It’s important that they are kept empty.” On each vessel there is a remarkable portrait. She chose each person because they are special to her for a variety of reasons. They are not all saints, but to her mind all have a sense of openness and emptiness about them. She noted that, “I have painted their faces on empty pots in order to represent the idea that they each have, in varying degrees, emptied themselves of themselves. They’ve made themselves receptive, in one way or another, to the divine.”
These portraits range from the enigmatic Leonard Cohen, to Mother Theresa, Sri Ramana Maharshi and the Dalai Lama. There is also a series of terracotta vessels called Vestments, which within the abstracted shape of a religious vestment she has painted exquisite patterns.
Accompanying the earthen vessels are delicate small scale drawings. Many are of hermitages, also a type of vessel, which are her homage to the small house movement. Jillian has been quite taken by the ‘small house movement’ and its philosophy. She sees a parallel between “the very strict ‘emptying out’ or editing of physical stuff required by an individual to live in a small house unencumbered by unnecessary things with the process of ‘emptying out’ or editing of psychological things required by an individual to be open and receptive to the divine, or to be ‘free to choose the good’.”
Jillian’s artworks can be found in the collections of Edith Cowan University, Royal Perth Hospital, Saint John of God Hospital, Murdoch University, King Edward Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, plus many private collections.
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