These paintings are a small, characteristic representation of Jill’s work. They come from her first years after art school (SVA, mid-1970s) until just before she died in 2014. The early work strongly reflects her studies with Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, and Don Nice, before she subsequently became interested in figuration and, latter still, in abstraction.
What are these paintings “about?” What was she “up to?” Jill’s not here to directly answer that question, and her work of several decades is not likely to yield a single answer. Besides, she actively resisted talking about her work, out of a highly developed sense of circumspection, to be sure, but also, she’d point out, that’s why she paints rather than writes. However, she once allowed: No work of art speaks for itself. I have my ideas about what I’m doing, of course. But, in the end and when it’s good, art evokes a feeling that is the viewers’ and engages their intellect. I can only hope my work does so.
That said, here's one take on some of Jill’s work, from Tracey Hummer, a former editor at Art Forum: This work is about layers—what lies beneath and upon a highly active surface. Through accumulation and excavation, Glover builds, breaks away, and digs deep to reveal meaning the photographic image cannot disclose.
Glover allows the medium of photography to inform, filtrate, and then relent to a kind of alchemy. Liberated of representation, her goal is to both mask and uncover, allowing the image to emerge and submerge, evolve and dissolve.
The process of combining image and material permits Glover to discover new layers of opacity and luminosity while creating a "suspended landscape.” The natural, organic forms to which the artist frequently gravitates are often revealed in earthen colors—olive, ochre, gold—and in a tonal treatment we might call "Glover grisaille."
The photographic image both submits to and resists the worked surface, which is sometimes soft and smooth but often scraped, pitted and bitten. Despite, or because of, an inherent tension between texture and what Glover chooses to reveal, she conveys both her intention to integrate the "document" into the paint and her ongoing fascination with photography not just as an image but as a map. Glover explores and navigates surface quality to deeply ident the viewer’s perception, enticing us to question the apparency of the images we carry with us.
What are these paintings “about?” What was she “up to?” Jill’s not here to directly answer that question, and her work of several decades is not likely to yield a single answer. Besides, she actively resisted talking about her work, out of a highly developed sense of circumspection, to be sure, but also, she’d point out, that’s why she paints rather than writes. However, she once allowed: No work of art speaks for itself. I have my ideas about what I’m doing, of course. But, in the end and when it’s good, art evokes a feeling that is the viewers’ and engages their intellect. I can only hope my work does so.
That said, here's one take on some of Jill’s work, from Tracey Hummer, a former editor at Art Forum: This work is about layers—what lies beneath and upon a highly active surface. Through accumulation and excavation, Glover builds, breaks away, and digs deep to reveal meaning the photographic image cannot disclose.
Glover allows the medium of photography to inform, filtrate, and then relent to a kind of alchemy. Liberated of representation, her goal is to both mask and uncover, allowing the image to emerge and submerge, evolve and dissolve.
The process of combining image and material permits Glover to discover new layers of opacity and luminosity while creating a "suspended landscape.” The natural, organic forms to which the artist frequently gravitates are often revealed in earthen colors—olive, ochre, gold—and in a tonal treatment we might call "Glover grisaille."
The photographic image both submits to and resists the worked surface, which is sometimes soft and smooth but often scraped, pitted and bitten. Despite, or because of, an inherent tension between texture and what Glover chooses to reveal, she conveys both her intention to integrate the "document" into the paint and her ongoing fascination with photography not just as an image but as a map. Glover explores and navigates surface quality to deeply ident the viewer’s perception, enticing us to question the apparency of the images we carry with us.