Jelly Green
“A branch swaying up above, shadowing a canvas or a cloud moving past the sun - it’s always changing, and the painting must change with it”
Q&A
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I've always found dappled light very enchanting. To properly capture the effect of this moving, intermittent, shifting light is very difficult. However, if I can get it right it can often add movement into a painting.
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Definitely Spring. There is something very hopeful and exciting about Spring. As someone who paints a lot in-situ, this is the beginning of many long days outside with my easel.
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Morning. If I manage to get up early enough I most enjoy the morning light. I love standing in a woodland in the early sunshine as it rises through the leaves, the light almost kissing them as it moves.
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When painting any oil painting but especially a landscape I am always working dark to light. I am often beginning in these areas of darkness with the light areas being the last touches on the canvas.
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John Constable and the way he could paint the moving sky and its effect on the ground.
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Whether working inside or outside my work has always been very dictated by the light. When painting outdoors it can look completely different from one minute to the next. A branch swaying up above shadowing a canvas or a cloud moving past the sun, it’s always changing, and the painting must change with it.
Evening Walk Walpole I, 2023
Evening Walk Walpole II, 2023
Evening Light - Dennington VIII, 2023
Forest Floor - Treshnish, 2024
About
Whether working inside or outside, Jelly’s work is dictated to by light. The absorbing atmospheres she creates on canvas indeed, depict the time of day she was immersed in the woodland floors.
Working en plein air, Jelly prefers early morning light when the rising sun creeps through the leaves indicating the day’s progress. Often dappled rays work to highlight an organic form on the woodland floor or branch across the composition. Her watercolour studies might later translate into oils in her studio but, the moment of the day is captured by the light’s essence. In translating these scenes to canvas, Jelly works from dark to light.
Jelly’s large-scale work revel the magnificent primordial canopies of the world’s forests. Having grown up in Australia, Jelly has spent extended periods of time immersed in the global web of woodlands and jungles from Brazil to Borneo and Sri Lanka to New Zealand. She now regularly paints in her home county, Suffolk and on Mull for her annual excursion. She studied at the Royal Drawing School and has been mentored by Maggi Hambling since she was 16 years old.
