Jeanette Lafontine (born in 1981) is an artist based in Norway with a MFA in medium- and material based art from the Oslo Academy of the Arts.
She uses the landscape motifs as a source for painterly invention, and presents pictorial worlds through both intuitive and controlled gestures. Even though she finds inspiration in the real world, she is not attempting to capture something about a particular place or time. Her paintings are rarely from a specific place, but a result of all the inputs, her sketches and the process itself. Even though her colour palette is not limited to earthy tones, the Nordic landscape often makes itself known.
Her work relates to both abstraction and representation, and she is trying to balance between the familiar versus the more incomprehensible. She is interested in the process of making a painting, and her method becomes a search for images.
“I am interested in painting both as an object and an idea. How different elements and shapes are making a pictorial space that can trigger our imagination, but also the physical qualities of a painting.”
“Even though my works are often drawn from the landscape, I am not attempting to capture something about a particular place or time. It is more about a notion or an idea of a landscape. The focus of my work is not to inform the viewer of a specific meaning, rather it is meant to be experienced, hoping for the viewer to experience something that are familiar yet fictional.”
Soon after she graduated she was awarded a residency stay at Residency Unlimited in New York, and her work has been shown in exhibitions both at home and abroad. Jeanette Lafontine’s paintings have recently been included in Saatchi Art – the world’s leading online art gallery – printed publications, and her works are in several private collections throughout Europe, the USA and Canada. Curators at RISE ART in London also have her down as an ‘Artist to watch in 2022’.
