Three years on from our previous interview with artist, Jess Hazell, Britain Uncovered made the trip over to Margate for the artist’s first ever solo exhibition, ‘A Woman Between’. With a warm summer’s breeze trickling in through gallery doors – along with a glass or two of wine to ease us into the conversation – this time around we honed in on Jess’s transition away from nude artwork, her current perspectives on the body positivity movement, the various inspirations behind her latest art, the success of the show itself, and so much more!
BU: Hi Jess! When we held our previous interview back in March 2021 we were still deep in lockdown – so it’s a pleasure to finally meet in person, and congratulations on the launch of your first ever solo show! If we recall correctly, you had moved to the UK in 2017, and were based in London when we last spoke. How’s it all being going, and what prompted your move to the coast over here in Margate?
Jess: Hi! Yes, it was 2017 that I moved over here from Australia, and I was in London for five years. That’s where I met my partner. And it was the typical London thing and I thought, “I can’t do it anymore.” The creativity was dead, everything was too expensive and I had to work 60 hours a week, when I didn’t really want to do that - so I wondered what we could do. We just wanted to go to the seaside and have this sort of community, so we just moved to Margate.
I’m really happy here, and being here a year and half, I’ve been able to create this solo show, which is something I never really did in London. I did the group shows, where at most I’d get to display three works – which was great, and it was really nice doing that stuff, because it got me into that environment and I was getting used to exhibitions and talking to galleries.
When I was creating my work before lockdown, it was in that space and online, and then it just went online and then I kind of got comfortable there, because I thought, “I can hide a little bit. And I can just do my thing, and I can post it online”, and I maybe got a little complacent. I thought, “I can post something, and someone’s probably going to buy it – or at least, someone’s going to react to it. Something’s going to happen.”
And then eventually, if you looked hard enough you could probably see at what point I quit. I didn’t care anymore, and I’d lost the love. For three months I was just painting for the sake of it because I thought I needed to, and then I just stopped. I thought, “This isn’t who I am.”
BU: As many of our readers will remember, when we last spoke you were creating these really powerful and empowering paintings depicting the female form, but you’ve since moved away from this style of art. How did your audience and followers react to this change in direction? Were they equally as enthusiastic and supportive, or did you get the sense there was there a bit of a transition?
Jess: Definitely the latter. It became quite apparent that my work spoke louder than I did, and that was fine because I felt really strongly about the work. I was really proud of it. But I think because I changed so abruptly and so away from an online space, I don’t think people were ready or received it very well. Because I didn’t really have a back story to it – I just started posting really random stuff, and people were like, “What the fuck are you doing! Where has this come from?”
So without that concept around it, whereas people knew what I was doing before, I think it was hard for people to engage with it. But I also didn’t know what I was doing with it either. I just wanted the space to be able to explore it, which I think is the most important part of being an artist – the exploration, the experimentation and the development. You have to do all these things. You can’t just do one thing. Well you can, but I don’t want to.
I wanted to know I could do it as well. I started believing in my head that I’m only ever going to be able to create this type of work, because I never really did anything else. But I wanted to challenge myself to see if I can do still life and nature scenes. I’m still not great at it, but I’m proud of doing it and trying.
BU: Despite having moved away from the empowering nude art you had become so synonymous with, you do still feature bodies in a lot of your more recent work too - so it’s definitely a recurring theme and something that’s present despite the changes in your approach?
Jess: Always! I’ve still got the same elements. It’s still empowering figurative stuff, and it’s still very much womanhood. But it’s gone less about the body, and has become more introspective.
BU: I remember you explaining to us that when you first moved to London, the paintings had come about because you felt independent and were out by yourself for the first time so far from home, and that they had evolved from that. But once you had settled in a bit more, your general outlook changed over time too, so maybe it seems like a natural evolution for your art to have evolved alongside it?
Jess: 100%, and I think it’s a little bit reflective of my age as well. When I was creating the empowering nude artwork I was in my early 20s, so it was about coming into my body and experiencing womanhood for the first time. Everything was on the surface and everything was there, so I felt like it was representative of my body. And my body was the thing carrying me through everything, so that’s what I wanted to reflect in my art.
Now that I’m approaching my late 20s, I’m doing the mental work. We all have to go to therapy now, and life is getting really hard – so it’s less about my body and what’s happening out here, and more about what’s happening inside me. So this is where the work has gone.
BU: It’s so interesting to hear how your outlook has led to your art developing in this way. And if you ever wanted to go back to that type of art one day, we're sure the door is always open. But do you think you’ll stick with the still life artwork for the foreseeable future?
Jess: I think I want to see where it goes, and I’m really excited to see where it goes. I just feel like there’s a little bit more to delve into. I think with that old stuff, maybe it could be something I do that’s workshop based. Where I could host women’s circles and do spiritual stuff, but also have this more approachable art thing that can be more inclusive.
BU: Even though you’ve moved away from it with your art, what are your thoughts on the body positivity movement and the ways it’s progressed in the three years since we last spoke?
Jess: I think I’m still there, and I think it’s still so important to talk about – but I think I’m less about body positivity now and more about body neutrality and body empowerment. Because with the work that I’ve done, introspectively, I think I had occupied a space of toxic positivity for a while. Both for the body and the mind, where it was just like, “Nothing bad can happen. Anything bad shouldn’t happen, and if it does, ignore it.”
And I don’t really agree with that anymore. The same way I don’t agree with body positivity, because it says, “You’re beautiful”, and that’s it. No, you can have bad days and your body can let you down, and I’ve experienced that all these bad things can happen; but we should let them happen, and we should honour them. So yes, I’m still there, but it’s moved in a little way.
BU: A lot of people have mentioned the same thing to us during past interviews. That forced positivity can be so detrimental, and forcing yourself to feel a certain way and pretending you feel great about yourself when you perhaps don’t can potentially be quite harmful. Acknowledging those natural ups and downs, and embracing the fact that your worth won’t be determined by the way you feel about your body, can really help take the pressure off.
Jess: You put pressure on yourself and you set yourself up for a little bit of failure. Failure’s fine, but it doesn’t feel good when you have this expectation of yourself, and sometimes you don’t get there, and that’s fine too.
You just have to give yourself a bit of grace and a bit of patience. And if today’s not the day, that’s fine, just lean into it. And those days are so much easier to navigate once you just let them happen. They just pile up if you keep ignoring them, and then there’s this massive fall, and it’s so much harder to clean that up.
BU: Do you think that all of your past work, where you painted these empowering nude bodies, led you to this state of mind you’re in now?
Jess: Yes, 100%. I think so. I think it was a really nice way to enter into this work. When I was doing that work I was thinking, “Oh my god, this is it. This is my big break. This is as good as it’s going to get”, and I was a little bit scared about that. Because I thought, “I don’t know this is as good as I can do.” So now that I’ve moved in here, I’ve realised that was just a gateway.
BU: Which of your pieces here today would you say you’re most proud of?
Jess: I’m really proud of my self-portrait, because that was the first self-portrait I’ve ever done. So I think it was a bit of a journey – not in terms of being proud of the way it looks – but I’m proud of what I’ve put into it. I had to get through the vanity of it, and the self-indulgence of a self-portrait, and it felt like a really tricky thing to navigate. But once I did it, I just felt really proud of it.
I broke through this really weird barrier of me and my art as two separate things. And I kind of married them together, and it felt like a bit of a turning point for this whole show, which is why I wanted to include that as the foundation for the show.
So in terms of that, that’s my favourite – but in terms of what my favourite painting is, it would be After A Walk, Before A Siesta. I feel like there are a lot of new skills that I learned in that painting, so technique-wise, I’m really proud of it. It’s my sister as well, so I feel quite connected to it. It’s the fastest painting I completed in the whole show, because I became so encaptured by it. And because there’s so much going on, I didn’t get lost in one certain thing. I was able to do fewer layers and focus on blocking and getting more of the textures and the tones in.
BU: What did your sister make of it?
Jess: She loves it! I didn’t tell her I was doing it, and when I showed her half-way through she was really happy!
BU: What can you share with us about another of your pieces here today, Vibes and Vibrations?
Jess: This is one of the older pieces of the collection. It was the first one I did that I felt really drifted away from the old stuff. And I still wanted to have the same colour things, but also have it grounded in womanhood. I wanted it to be representative of a moment of chaos; you know, when women are just unpacking their bags. I just thought it would be really funny to include really random objects.
It felt quite fun and quite careless, I guess, because I didn’t want anything too serious. The whole point of the show is to narrate these moments in between all these other bigger moments in our lives, where we’re assigned certain roles and we have all of these things to do, and we’re trying to be all these people. But who are we when we’re just here? And I just thought that moment of a chaotic throwing of objects is kind of that really primal thing.
It’s still grounded in female empowerment, because all of those objects are representative of something, but just that really quick moment. And also something that’s really relatable to every woman, because people can look at that and think, “Oh, I have everything from that.”
BU: How did the private view go on Thursday night? It looked really busy based on the images we saw on Instagram!
Jess: Really well! I opened at 6pm and it was busy from then until about 10pm. I was lucky enough to have a lot of donations of beer and wine, so it was free-flowing all night, and it let people settle. I obviously had my prints done as well, and I really wasn’t sure if they were going to do well, but I actually had to do an emergency print order yesterday. So that’s really good, and they’ve been really well received.
BU: Have any of the originals sold since your exhibition opened its doors yesterday morning?
Jess: Yes, I’ve sold two from this main area and then a smaller one around the corner. I’m really proud of it. I never expected to sell work and came into this with really low expectations. My only goal was to just do the show and get the work out there, and get people to see it; and also, just for me to see it. I’ve been working out of my studio for so long, and these paintings sit up against a wall, and I never get to see them up, so for me it’s really nice to have the work as a proper whole.
I moved to Margate and didn’t really market myself as an artist. I got a job in a coffee shop around the corner, and still people are like, “I didn’t even know you painted”! It was intentional. I didn’t want to move here and be like, “I’m painting”! I wanted to really settle in, but at the start of the year I decided that this year is my painting year, and I was going to make things happen.
BU: Maybe you could even have some of your art displayed on the walls of your coffee shop one day! Some of our past interviewees have attempted to get their nude art displayed in bars and coffee shops over the years, but there still seems to be a barrier and a pushback against that type of art – with people still viewing it as sexual or explicit, despite its intentions.
Jess: And that’s the thing we’re trying to get away from. It’s not intended for this purpose, and the only controversial thing is people’s reactions to it. They’re the ones creating all this stuff around it.
BU: Despite the best efforts of artists, body image influencers and sites like ours, there are still wildly different perceptions on nudity and the sight of the body in general - and it's possible that it may never be normalised. But opening up these conversations, and talking to people and hearing about their different experiences and perspectives, feels like it could potentially help move things in the right direction.
Jess: That’s the most important thing, just talking about it. And I think doing that will normalise it. If we tiptoe around this really taboo subject, then of course people are going to be like, “Ooh, I don’t know what’s the right thing to do there.”
It’s like that painting of mine [Vibes and Vibrations], and people might be whispering saying they haven’t really seen it, and I’ll be like, “Yeah, it’s fucking vibrators, they’re all mine, let’s talk about it”! The only thing that’s awkward or a little bit scary about it is the way people approach it.
And it’s the same thing with naked female bodies. The only reason people are getting upset about it is because they’re upset. But what are they upset about? The fact that there are titties in front of them, or the fact they’re uncomfortable? And if that’s the case, let’s talk to them about why they’re uncomfortable. I’d say to these people, “It’s not the titties, it’s you. You do the work, and then everything will be a lot easier to deal with around you.”
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– Our interview with Jess took place on July 13, 2024 at the Salon Gallery in Margate – the home of her solo exhibition, A Woman Between, which runs from July 12-17.
As per the show’s programme notes, “The paintings by Jess Hazell seek to connect us to the moments of stillness that reside in between our prescribed roles as women. A body of work created for the purpose of realignment and encouraging a mindful practice, the work created by Jess is a response to the high speed race of modern day and hustle culture that grips our society and holds captive our ability to feel free and at peace.”
Jess is an Australian oil painter living in Margate. She is a self-taught artist and has grounded her work in exploring the realms of womanhood. By illustrating the feminine experience through a colourful palette and emotive brushwork, Jess has created a body of work that seeks to awaken our inner power.
For more from Jess, you can visit her website at jesshazellart.com, and you can also keep tabs on the artist via her Instagram and Facebook channels. Our previous interview with Jess can be found in the Britain Uncovered archives by clicking here.
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