JURA

Acrylic and Charcoal on Canvas 76 x 76 cms Glazed

The painting JURA is of special significance in my view of subject treatment.

I first visited the island of JURA in late August/September. It appeared to me as almost tropical with the warm gulf stream waters turquoise and blue against perfect soft brown sugar beaches. It really was as though it had been plucked from the Caribbean and re-set glimmering in the Western Isles of Scotland. The weather portrayed the island as peaceful and balmy but once in my studio and mulling over the composition I felt that I had sensed a more powerful, less idyllic character of the place and that in its winter months the island would look more dramatic; so that is how I painted it. For me the result was haunting and exhilarating, partly because of the fictional climate I had placed upon it partly because I felt this fiction to be accurate.

After the sale of the piece and in a further twist of season and geography the owner of the painting and I spent hours talking about the painting late into the evening and we discussed the climate and landscape of the setting with complete accord and concurrence.The conversation was abstract in that we were talking about atmosphere and impression but in my mind I was reliving this island in Scotland. It was only the following day when he told me that he was going to be driving through that region on his way to Geneva that I realised that he was referring to the JURA mountain range in France and not Scotland at all!

For me this interpretation and relocation in his minds map was a memorable endorsement of painting over title and a lesson I have cherished.

I now know both regions well and they couldn't be more different but the painting speaks of both places to me now and most importantly in the same language.

James Maconochie

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