Master Series

Once Upon a Crocofish

A Solo Exhibition of Works by Jane Callister

Artist Statement

It Started with a Crocofish, is the title of a series of small pencil drawings and sculptures that I began in 2019 which couldn’t be visually or conceptually further from my previous ‘serious’ body of large abstract paintings. Though pleasure has also been one of the goals in my past work this was different in a key way. These surreal drawings began when I was visiting my family home on the Isle of man (a small island between England and Ireland). To entertain Daisy, my then seven-year-old grand-niece, I would draw silly monsters and hybrid animals like a crocofish or bananamouse for her. One day, while sitting quietly with my father-- who was on chemotherapy at the time--he looked over and let out a loud belly laugh at what I was doing. He thought they were hilarious. Seeing how they lifted his spirits I asked him for suggestions too. “A man with wheels for legs” he’d say, or “a woman with an elephant’s body”. I would then embellish them further, like a game of exquisite corpse, and watch as his face would light up.  As the series multiplied my whole family began chipping in with more challenging suggestions like: a moose, a skateboard and avocados. It was a lot of fun and touching to see how this simple act of humor helped everyone cope. When I returned home to the US I continued to develop them further. Then Covid hit and the whole world turned upside down. While people were baking bread or binge-watching Netflix I was obsessively drawing for hours on end in the evenings with movies on in the background. After after a day of intense teaching on Zoom I, surprisingly, found myself enjoying being a recluse.

This forced captivity, and not being able to go to my studio, gave me time and permission to continue working small and to contemplate life (as many of us I’m sure did). Then, after thinking about how we couldn’t go to movie theatres and wondering how many would be closing down due to the pandemic, I began working on a new series of drawings, that continue today. Entitled:  Movie Minds: Memories of Film. These modest 9x12 inch pencil drawings began as reflections on movies I watched growing up that had entertained, frightened or impacted my ideas about the world. As they developed I began writing lists of films that explore different themes and realized they are more about memory itself than the particular movie. A kind of self-portrait, they are not meant to be puzzles for viewers to guess but rather to trigger a sense of recognition that you can’t quite put your finger on, like waking up with a part of a song in your head but you can’t remember the title (or even who it was by) then maybe later it comes to you at a random moment. Some images may be more identifiable than others. Some an audience may never have seen but I hope together they form a sequence that suggests that a narrative is at play. Perhaps a viewer will know the references or maybe they will generate a whole different set of questions in an attempt to make sense of them. If recognized they might ponder what it meant to them the first time they watched it or what it represented to them back then compared with now. Maybe the stories no-longer generate the same feelings or instead now have a heightened relevance in this current cultural moment? Like the inherent malleability of memory (and loss of it over time) I hope that this series also conveys the idea that thought is fleeting and that memories can be vivid or vague and recur in varied states: fragments and hints that reflect our own experiences that inform who we are today.