Memories

When Ruari Jack Hughes and Janet Yates first met, they quickly discovered a close affinity in their ideas and their work. The centrality of memory as a motif is strongly evident in both Ruari Jack's writing and Janet's painting. More than the content of their art, there is also marked similarity in their style and technique. Building images through layers ¿ in words or brushstrokes ¿ to create a felt sense of the subject is common to each artist's approach. Both artists believe that...
More Description

When Ruari Jack Hughes and Janet Yates first met, they quickly discovered a close affinity in their ideas and their work. The centrality of memory as a motif is strongly evident in both Ruari Jack's writing and Janet's painting. More than the content of their art, there is also marked similarity in their style and technique. Building images through layers ¿ in words or brushstrokes ¿ to create a felt sense of the subject is common to each artist's approach. Both artists believe that time spent anywhere makes us citizens of that place.Janet repeatedly overlays the surface of the canvas so that the paint forces its way to the surface in an ultimate explosion of colour. In the works contained in Memories of Exotic Lands several paintings are composed of intertwining stripes while others have striped elements, a feature redolent of the weavings of the women in Borneo, Vietnam and other Asian lands. A recurring feature of Ruari Jack's poetry is the technique of call and recall, a word or phrase being caught and reflected as more than an echo, as another strand of the same meaning. Alternatively, words are piled up in a serried montage showing the same idea or image from multiple different perspectives.