Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville was born 7th May 1970 in Cambridge, England and now works and lives in Oxford. Saville is a contemporary British painter, and has also emerged as a Young British Artist. She attended The Lilley and Stone School in Newark, Nottinghamshire for her secondary education, later gaining her degree at Glasgow School of Art (1988 -1992). Further on she was awarded a six month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. During her time at this University she noticed there were "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirt...” and was greatly inspired and most interested in the physicality of them. A physicality that she somewhat credits to Pablo Picasso; an artist that she sees as a painter that made subjects as if “they were solidly there…not fleeting.”
Saville is primarily known for her large-scale paintings of nude obese women, which are usually larger than life size, and are strongly pigmented, giving a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the figure of the body, for example the painting on the left. Additionally a lot of her work features distorted flesh, high calibre, brush strokes and patches of oil colour. However others reveal the surgeon’s mark of a plastic surgery operation, sometimes adding marks onto the body, such as white “target” rings like the image on the right, Plan (1993). Her work evokes a deep fascination. In 1994, Saville spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York City, influencing her paintings.
Plan (1993) is an oil painting on a 9’ x 7’ canvas (right) of a woman’s body which fills the canvas through a combination of physical bulk and extreme foreshortening. The image depicts a nude female figure with contour lines marked on her body, inscribed like a topographical map. This shows distinct lines of surgeon’s plans.
Since her debut in 1992, her focus has remained on the female body, slightly different into subjects with “floating and in determinant gender” painting large scale paintings of transgender people. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. She dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting, her style of painting has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens, and both figure painters. In 1994, her increasing profile enabled her to exhibit in several notable group shows: Young British Artists III, Saatchi Gallery, London (1994), Contemporary British Art ’96, Museum of Kalmar, Stockholm (1996) and the iconic Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of the Arts, London (1977). These positioned Saville as one of the foremost painters of her generation.
Inspiration.
Jenny Saville's work has inspired me to experiment with glass to distort the face by flattening the faces features to create an unfamiliar effect. Although Saville is a contemporary painter, her distinctive perception and use of unconventional subjects that go against social norms has influenced me to produce unusual, manipulated portraiture with different medias.
Saville is primarily known for her large-scale paintings of nude obese women, which are usually larger than life size, and are strongly pigmented, giving a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the figure of the body, for example the painting on the left. Additionally a lot of her work features distorted flesh, high calibre, brush strokes and patches of oil colour. However others reveal the surgeon’s mark of a plastic surgery operation, sometimes adding marks onto the body, such as white “target” rings like the image on the right, Plan (1993). Her work evokes a deep fascination. In 1994, Saville spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York City, influencing her paintings.
Plan (1993) is an oil painting on a 9’ x 7’ canvas (right) of a woman’s body which fills the canvas through a combination of physical bulk and extreme foreshortening. The image depicts a nude female figure with contour lines marked on her body, inscribed like a topographical map. This shows distinct lines of surgeon’s plans.
Since her debut in 1992, her focus has remained on the female body, slightly different into subjects with “floating and in determinant gender” painting large scale paintings of transgender people. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. She dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting, her style of painting has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens, and both figure painters. In 1994, her increasing profile enabled her to exhibit in several notable group shows: Young British Artists III, Saatchi Gallery, London (1994), Contemporary British Art ’96, Museum of Kalmar, Stockholm (1996) and the iconic Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of the Arts, London (1977). These positioned Saville as one of the foremost painters of her generation.
Inspiration.
Jenny Saville's work has inspired me to experiment with glass to distort the face by flattening the faces features to create an unfamiliar effect. Although Saville is a contemporary painter, her distinctive perception and use of unconventional subjects that go against social norms has influenced me to produce unusual, manipulated portraiture with different medias.