ARTISTS

Jinny Slyfield

Jinny strongly believes in a visual record of history and life. She treasures hand-tinted photographs of her ancestors, and has long been a keen observer of faces and expressions. She began drawing, and then painting, models in costume at the Ottawa School of Art, and is fascinated by the variety of traditional costumes and facial structures of recent immigrants. Her brushwork and use of colour is unique, yet reminiscent of Varley, and the skin tones glow with the life blood beneath. She layers her paint with rich undertones, and builds the skin much as a sculptor would do. She believes that a painting takes us beyond the realm of a photograph, as she instills her work with her own impressions of the sitter, since she works from the model in almost every case.

She has read many novels in which the mansion possesses a portrait gallery of all those who have lived therein, and she has enjoyed a tour, which she arranged, of the portraits of Prime Ministers and Speakers on Parliament Hill. Some of those were painted from death masks, again, marking a past tradition which sought to leave a reminder of loved ones and important people, before the advent of photography.

Jinny is a juried-in member of the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists and the Portrait Society of Canada and was chosen to exhibit at the 2009 and 2010 shows in Toronto at the John Aird Gallery. She had a solo show and a group show of portraits in Ottawa in 2007 and 2008, as well as showing as a juried-in member of the Foyer Gallery in 10 group shows a year. Jinny’s first love is painting portraits, but her work varies from the sublime to the suspension of disbelief, depending on the muse of the day She is a prize-winning Ottawa artist and photographer and she incorporates in her work, her impressions of the brilliant colours and textures of exotic countries she has visited.

She has shown in group shows in Sieci, Italy, La Celle St. Cloud, France, The Parkdale Gallery, Ottawa, Gallery 7A, Ottawa, the Gloucester Gallery, the Swiss Artists’ Show, the Sante Restaurant Gallery, Heritage Canada, Trinity College Art Sale, Toronto, the Big Brothers and Sisters Art Show as well as with many artists’ associations in Ottawa and is showing at the Frederic Remington Museum juried show in Ogdensburg, New York during May, 2009.

Jinny Studied Fine Art and Illustration at le Centre Communitaire de La Celle St. Cloud, France, The Ottawa School of Art, The High School of Commerce, and added Graphic Arts to her repertoire at Algonquin College. Her muses have been The Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Raphael and Van Gogh.

She worked in the art department of Gregory/ Gregory, at DFO and was Art Director for Ambience Advertising and CCL where she won several awards for her advertisements in national magazines.

. She taught drawing and portraits at the Orleans Visual Art Centre, The Ottawa Board, The Nepean Visual Arts Centre, in Neuchatel, Switzerland and in private facilities in Ottawa. Her work is in collections in China, Australia, Switzerland and Ireland.

Contact Jinny by phone 613 738 0905 or email jingrant@rogers.com.