Jill Colchester

Jill Colchester, a trained contemporary dancer, Primary school teacher and Adult Leaning tutor, is fascinated with the body and related movement.

She works quickly within a restricted time frame in order to maintain a dynamic and gestural line, a freshness and immediacy with brushstrokes.

Her works, largely drawings, are visual and emotional responses to the face or figure presented.

Currently, as an exercise in looking, Jill is drawing faces from Zoom, once a week, from a pool of 400 artists from around the world, all doing the same thing, to the same playlists – each portrait to one track of music. All tracks under five minutes.

Life Drawing has been a long established practice. Jill has considered how little information is needed to see or read the pose. She has kept the movement within a changed pose by drawing or painting both positions and editing back the unnecessary.

After years of working with nudes, Jill is now exploring partially exposed bodies and fully clothed figures. The textures, colours, fabrics opening up to exploratory paint work.

Jill uses acrylics, inks and mixed media.

Underpinning her work ethos is to not mind failing, to not TRY to succeed. Alongside restricting the time, Jill is open to surprise, to be delighted when drawings and painting ‘sing’ to her. She never knows when that will be…