Janet Mazenier
Sympoiesis, Vibrant Matter and the Third Space
“Sympoiesis is a simple word, it means "making-with"”
The places on which we tread hold significance for us with narratives relating to memory, emotion and nostalgia. My paintings hold a tension in their articulation between realism and abstraction, drawing and painting, and investigate how being lost relates to walking and slow looking.
On walks, my primary investigative companion was my old Labrador Bessie. She died in mid-June 2020, however before she passed, she led both of us on meanderings that grew shorter in length but that stretched in terms of time spent together. Slowing down with her enabled me to parse elements of the world into my work, the transmutation of a rich discovery of vibrant matter and nature’s materiality.
My work is created with oil and beeswax, representative of vibrant matter, a “third space” where the real and imagined come together in a sympoietic way. The materiality of the work holds its own agency and vitality, the more-than 50 layers in each work building their history towards the finished painting.
