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Jan
Phethean is an internationally renowned muralist who was trained in
the Lebanon before the onset of the civil war in the early 1970s.
Jan worked in very dangerous conditions in Beirut for the first two
years of the unrest and then moved down to the safety of the United
Arab Emirates. The bombs of Beirut were a far cry from the almost
overwhelming wealth of sheikh’s palaces and the many new hotels
that were being built during the late seventies all requiring lavish
decoration on a grand scale, art that Phethean excelled at.
In
her late 20s she returned to Sussex and set up an international
interior design consultancy which was to win many awards over the
following twenty four years. Her celebrity client base included
Sir Richard Branson, Oliver Tobias, and Adam Faith.
Her interiors, both corporate and domestic featured imaginative
finishes and murals. Phethean designed the first three Virgin Atlantic
Upper Class Lounges both in the UK and the USA and all featured
beautiful sky murals as part of the design scheme.
Two
years ago she returned to her roots in Cornwall to paint full time.
Her Mother was Cornish. It has taken her two years to make the transition
from large scale figurative painting to smaller more abstract work.
Her style of painting is confident and precise.
Phethean
says, “I have had the privilege of studying abstract art with
Russell Hedges in Penzance for almost two years and he has been
a major force in transforming my work and intellectual process.
This year I have worked towards the exhibition at the Morrab Road
Library based on the standing stones in our lives and landscape
and what they mean to us.
My starting point was a series of monolithic rock paintings. I began
to think of how we once took shelter beneath rocks thousands of
years ago, how we have shaped them and moved them, made them sacred
and used them for ritual, worship, baptism and burial.
The beauty of each rock is unique, whether it is the natural beauty
of lichen and moss or the carved facets of a standing stone. There
is an enigmatic quality to the larger stones.........what was their
journey through time and what part have they played in the evolvment
of man since the beginning of time? “
Phethean’s
paintings reflect a sense of the sublime, as an alchemist strives
for gold, Phethean strives to express the intangible. Working in
a variety of imaginative materials Phethean brings a luminous textural
quality to the surfaces of her paintings.
Her first solo exhibition ‘Kerrak’ (meaning ‘rock’
in cornish) takes place at the Public Library, Penzance on May 4th
–June 30th 2005. Phethean’s work is also exhibiting in
Sussex at the Brighton Festival during May at the historic Ditchling
Gallery in Ditchling Village as part of ‘The Painters of Ditchling’
exhibition, and also at the Contemporary Gallery in Brighton. Phethean
also has a solo exhibition taking place in Falmouth in October this
year.
'Kerrak'
by Jan Phethean
4 May to 30 June 2005
Public Library, Morrab Road,
Penzance
www.janphethean.co.uk
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