'Neutrals and blues. Neutrals have the ability to portray feelings and emotions and can be meditative.'
What's your favourite colour?
Most schools have a hiding place, and most children who need one find it sooner or later. For Cristina Jordan it was the art store room, among the paper stacks and paint pots, while the rest of her class wrestled with long division down the corridor. “My art teacher at school was the first person who actually saw me as a person,” she says. “He was my hero and let me hide in the art store room to escape Maths.” Somewhere there is a maths teacher who never quite worked out where she went, and the art world is better off for it.
The joke only goes so far, though. That classroom was, in her words, “my sanctuary away from the trauma of peers and family life.” She was a loner, and the art room was the one place she felt comfortable. A feeling shared by many of us artists out here in the wild.
Cristina shares that, drawing was her first love, and the pencil is still the tool she says she could not live without. “I may not use it now in my practice but it’s the source of my artistic journey.” She went on to study European Art for her BA and for years worked in representational portraiture, the kind of careful likeness that rewards a steady hand and a good eye. Then life did what life does, and art took a back seat. When she came back to it later on, it “felt like completing a circle.” She came back changed, too. The portraits gave way to abstraction, and the careful likeness gave way to colour, texture and feeling. She is outspoken about why. “Art really is the best therapy.”
These days she works from home, under a studio name, My Kitchen Art Studio, that tells you roughly where the easel stands. She shares the space with her husband and two Irish Terriers, which anyone who has met an Irish Terrier will recognise as a serious test of concentration. Staying in the zone, she admits, is “a constant struggle”, but it is worth it.
Her process depends on her mood. “I may plan a painting or start with an idea which invariably changes very quickly.” From there she works intuitively, building up layers, adding and scraping back, adding again, “until I’ve created some history in the piece.” That word, history, crops up a lot when Cristina talks about her work. Her paintings are meant to look as though things have happened to them, because they have. And they carry the stories with them.
Look at her tool kit and you might mistake it for a recycling bin. Palette knives are essential, including a very large one that she prizes for the spontaneous, sweeping marks it makes. After that it gets more inventive: offcuts of corrugated card, scrapers, stencils, and “bits of plastic with rough edges.” None of it would get past a fussy art supplies catalogue, but it gives her the organic texture she is after, the scuffs and ridges that make a surface feel lived in.
The piece she points to as a turning point is called Sliding Doors. Like the film it borrows its name from, it is about fate, choice and the way small moments can send a life down completely different roads. It opened up a run of ideas she is still exploring around belonging, disconnection, and what she calls “the regenerative power we possess.” For someone who once found her only safe place in a cupboard full of art materials, those are not abstract themes, even if the paintings are.
That raises the question people inevitably ask of abstract art: what is it actually of? Cristina is relaxed about it. Her concepts are personal and she does not expect them to land the same way with everyone. “I think the misunderstanding is that people don’t need to understand my history,” she says. “Not everyone gets abstraction but for those who do it’s their interpretation that’s important.” It ties into the one rule she cheerfully refuses to follow, the idea that art has to be relatable or recognisable to a wide audience. Creating art is a personal expression, she argues, so it cannot translate universally by its very nature. Her measure of success is gentler. A good painting, for her, is one where someone appreciates its intent and connects with it, “even one person.”
As it turns out, quite a few people have connected. This year alone her work has been shown at the White Horse Gallery in Marlborough, Corsham Art Gallery, the Stroud Artists Co op, Leverton Art Week, The Base in Newbury and the Swindon Arts Fringe, and she planned to open up her own studio to visitors in September. Joining the BRUT list was another way of widening the circle. For her it is “the opportunity to connect and reach out to a community of creative people with different perspectives of the Art World.”
Her advice for anyone thinking of making art comes in short, firm instructions, the way you might write them on a sticky note above the sink. “Be Bold. Believe in yourself. Create your own confidence and don’t rely on approval from others.” Then the one that stands out, coming from a woman who started out hiding in a store room: “Don’t be isolated. Create a network.” And finally, “Be Patient.” She would know. It took her a whole circle to get back here.
Thank you Cristina, for becoming a part of our growing community of outsider artists here in Swindon and Wiltshire, and for sharing your story.
The Interview
1. What is your first memory of making art? (Was it creating as a child, the first time you called your work art, or the first time you worked with the medium that’s now your core practice?)
‘My art teacher at school was the first person who actually saw me as a person. He was my hero and let me hide in the art store room to escape Maths. Being in the Art classroom was my sanctuary away from the trauma of peers and family life. Being a loner it was the only place I felt comfortable.’
2. Walk us through your process. What does a typical session in your home / studio / workspace look like?
‘My process is different from day to day depending on my mood. I may plan a painting or start with an idea which invariably changes very quickly. I work intuitively building layers, adding and taking away continually until I’ve created some history in the piece.’
3. What is the one tool in your making process you couldn’t imagine life without? (That one favourite paintbrush, the palette you’ve used for 40 years, a simple pencil.)
‘My first love was drawing so I have to say a humble pencil is the one tool I couldn’t do without. I may not use it now in my practice but it’s the source of my artistic journey.’
4. Is there a piece you’ve made that you’d call a turning point in your art? What’s the piece, and what was the turning point?
‘I made a piece called Sliding Doors which explores themes of fate, choice and the unpredictable nature of life, illustrating how interconnected moments and decisions can lead to dramatically different paths, or “sliding doors moments”. This influence has led me to explore further ideas around belonging, disconnection and the regenerative power we possess.’
5. What materials or tools do you keep coming back to, and why those?
‘I love texture so palette knives are a must. I have a very large one which creates great marks that add spontaneity and movement. Other tools include random corrugated card or scrapers, stencils and bits of plastic with rough edges. They offer the organic marks and texture which give my work history.’
6. What’s something about your work that people usually misread or misunderstand?
‘As an abstract painter the concepts are very personal but do not necessarily translate to other people. I think the misunderstanding is that people don’t need to understand my history. Not everyone gets abstraction but for those who do it’s their interpretation that’s important.’
7. What does being part of the Brut list / outsider artist community mean to you?
‘What the Brut List means to me is the opportunity to connect and reach out to a community of creative people with different perspectives of the Art World.’
8. What’s a rule about “how art should be made” that you’ve happily ignored over and over?
‘The rule or idea that art has to be relatable or recognisable to a wide audience is a challenge to be overcome. Primarily creating art is a personal expression of feelings, thoughts, ideas etc., so by that very nature it cannot translate universally. However, a successful painting for me is an appreciation of its intent and a connection to even one person.’
9. What’s your favourite colour?
‘My colour palette has two main focuses, neutrals and blues. I feel drawn to the neutrals and earth colours as they fit with the mood of my work. Neutrals have the ability to portray feelings and emotions and can be meditative.’
10. If you could give someone a piece of advice about being or becoming an artist, what would that be?
‘Be Bold. Believe in yourself. Create your own confidence and don’t rely on approval from others. Don’t be isolated. Create a network. Be Patient.’