Jacqueline Chanda

I am drawn to representational genre scenes, intimate scenes of everyday life, of ordinary people at work or play. I love to capture people in the moment, in candid unscripted poses with unguarded expressions. The intent is to create visual metaphors of narrative moments in ongoing stories of life. I plan my paintings out based on thematic or conceptual series. Once I decide on a series, I look for visual information that will aid me in executing a set of paintings with different compositions based on the theme or concept I have selected. Observing people is a frequent practice of mine. I am most interested in the thoughtful attitudes that are conveyed by the human form, whether body gestures or facial expressions. While I do work from live models when possible, it is more convenient to work from photo references because my scenes generally involve multiple people. Photo references also allow me the opportunity to merge several elements from different photos into one scene, or create several different paintings of different scenes from just a single photo. When working from photo references, I crop the image and move it around until I find an acceptable placement for the figure I have selected as my focal point. I then do one or two sketches to try out various compositions. I like compositions that use accidental cropping as in a snapshot. As I work with the painting, I might take away people and add others to the scene as needed. Capturing the expressive characteristics connected to a scene of people can be quite elusive. But it is that challenge that drives my work and gives me great satisfaction when I succeed. My hope is that my paintings encourage the viewer to connect with life on a different level and see themselves and everyone as an integral part of the human experience. The attention I give to the scenes in my paintings, offer the viewer many interpretative levels to explore. Viewers who see my art often refer to how I capture moments in time. Capturing people’s expressive moment in time is what I aim to do. So when others see that and are moved by it, I feel joy.