Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2024 - Student interview - 07. Jenny Jin

JENNY JIN: My name is Jenny Jin. I studied visual arts at James Ruse Agricultural High School.

[gentle music playing]

My body of work is a series of paintings about the sense of warmth and unity and mainly familiarity in that close setting of being with friends and family together around candlelight.

The initial stages of my body of work involved experimenting with photography, specifically with candles. I was initially inspired by a Pinterest image, and that led me into looking at a lot of the chiaroscuro paintings of the Renaissance and also the Romantic period.

So initially I started looking at Caravaggio and his chiaroscuro paintings, but I found that the mood of his paintings were very dark, dramatic and gory. So I wanted to explore what different kinds of moods I could create with that same type of lighting, so that led me to look at other paintings specifically involving candlelight.

So my body of work was made with oil paint, and I started off with a charcoal sketch. And then it took a lot of layers to get the feeling right. But I started off with painting the dark background, mixing black with some reds and oranges. So I found that really helped get the warmth of the background instead of using just pure black. And I really enjoyed the process of refining, adding all those layers of oil paint to really capture the nuances of the faces.

So my subject matter was some of my friends from my kung fu class, and, also, I had a painting with me and my mum. When I was painting, I wanted to create quite realistic portraits and get the fine details that would make them stand out. So in this process, I used a lot of soft, fine brushstrokes and very nuanced mixtures of colours as well.

In the beginning, one of the challenges I had while trying to create these works was getting the proportions of all the faces right. I found that in my initial charcoal sketch, things felt a bit out of proportion, and I kind of corrected them as I went. So as I was adding those layers of paint, I'd make more detailed observations, and those helped me correct the proportions and the fine details to really get the resemblance of those people.

My process involved starting with taking photos of all of them, choosing photos. And then I started off with the boy, like the single boy, that portrait first. And when I was about 60-70% finished with that, I moved on to the other ones. And I continued this process until I had all 4 to around, I don't know, 70% completion. And then from there, I went through them one by one to refine them. And the refining process, I would move between paintings so it wouldn't become-- I wouldn't get stuck on one detail and be frustrated about that.

For Year 12 students doing the HSC, the first thing would be to find some subject that you really love. That will help you be fueled throughout the process. And then don't be too worried about skill, I think. Because for me, even though I was painting throughout high school, I never spent a term or more doing one painting. So throughout the process of painting over the year, I really could refine my skills.

I was really excited when I found out I got into ARTEXPRESS. And from here on now, I've started uni, and I'm doing psychology and also visual arts. So continuing that journey is super exciting. In uni this term, I started looking into more contemporary styles of art, and it's so exciting to explore just how broad the range of art can be.

[gentle music playing]