Talking to: Gabriella Jeans
Gabriella Jeans is an upcoming visual and performance artist, entwining her art practise with mysticism and esoteric philosophy. After graduating from Newcastle University in 2018 and spending time creating abroad, she is currently working on both commissions and personal work from her home in North West London.
After a series of terrifying - but liberating - paranormal experiences in 2014, her art practice became entwined with mysticism and esoteric philosophy. Ultimately, Gabriella is fascinated with what lies beyond the 'veil of perception', using her work to examine cultural beliefs about spirituality and engage with these beliefs herself. She tells us her work is fluid and regarded through her own eyes as a conversation she is having with the universe, a conversation which anyone is invited to join.
We caught up with Gabriella recently and delved further into her work, beliefs, influences and what drives her further, as well as a proper to and fro about the creative process and the challenges 2020 can bring to creatives.
‘Small Woods Where I Met Myself’ © Gabriella Jeans
What is going on for you at the moment? Are you a full time artist or are you doing other stuff to get by?
At the moment I am a full time artist. Sometimes I can live off that salary really comfortably and I can pay rent and I’ve got money for everything I want to do, like art residencies and socialising. I am quite organised at planning work in advance, making sure I have enough commissions, which is what I make most of my money from, but I lost quite a big job when the virus hit. I was meant to be working in Florida on a big project for three months. I was living in Berlin at the time the pandemic hit and I had to come home and take refuge with my parents.
I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a part time job, but it is hard to know how to balance that. I have a lot of time at the moment, but it’s great having that time for art. I am still quite a young artist in the grand scheme of things, I don’t necessarily work as fast as I should and therefore when I am doing commission work it doesn’t necessarily pay me as much as I would like.
So you say you are a young artist; how long have you been practising as an artist?
I graduated two summers ago, in 2019 I had full employment as a waitress, so it’s only been a year that I have been a full time artist. I had just moved to Berlin so I was having fun, I don’t think I really cracked the right amount of studio time vs inspiration time.
During lock down I was feeling really uncreative, and I couldn’t get to the studio. Then one of my friends commissioned me to make some work for Black Lives Matter, so I spent a lot of the summer doing that, making and selling prints. So it wasn’t really a commission in the end, the prints that came out of it became more my own work.
I am painting a mural for a friend right now and it is not my usual style. Being commission based you have to be quite versatile, but I like that, I like pushing my boundaries. I get a lot of satisfaction from working with people who aren’t necessarily creative; creative-minded maybe, but they aren’t necessarily makers. I love being able to bring their vision to life. Whereas if I am making art for the sake of it, which I do and I love, sometimes I don’t know what to do with it. If I can’t find a buyer, and then I feel I just have to pack it away into storage, there is something really horrible about that. I don’t know if you get that, if you are a maker?
I’m not a maker, but I am a writer, and I definitely get that if I write something really good and I don’t have a home for it to go to.
It just sits there and no one appreciates it! Whilst with commissions they have somewhere to go and be appreciated. And I think sometimes that puts me off experimenting, which is really bad. It is such a big deal as an artist; to make. I have had such problems in the past finding somewhere for big sculptures, so I really try to make sure everything I do has a purpose, but it is also so important for artists to experiment.
‘Elements of Earth and Sky and Everything Inbetween’.
So going back to what you said about lock down and you didn’t feel very creative - I find that very interesting, it does seem to be very polarising. It seems some creatives say that it is the best thing that ever happened to their creative process, and others say that they just froze and couldn’t ‘do’ during lockdown; couldn’t make anything. What are your thoughts on that?
I found I had a lot more time, but I also found that I didn’t want to create anything. Having all of that time, it made me feel very contrary, I didn’t want to sit down and draw. I kind of went into panic mode, and I felt like my life was completely out of my control. I am sure a lot of people felt that way, and a lot of creatives I talked to felt that exact same way. Also having pressure put on yourself, knowing that you have got loads of time, and you should be creating; I find that really awful. I think I get a lot of my best work done when I am supposed to be doing something else!
I remember reading something around the time we first went into lockdown, about writers and artists during the great plague; a lot of their best and finest works were created under quarantine. I remember thinking ‘oh that’s great then, no pressure’, I felt like I should be sitting down and writing my first novel, otherwise I have failed. A lot of my time was spent, like you said, feeling out of control, or panicking, or looking after my kids full time.
I can’t imagine what that must be like, being a mother and self employed; I can’t imagine having all of that responsibility during lock down.
Tell me a little bit about how you got into visual art, was it something you have always been passionate about from a young age?
You know what? I was always into art. My parents, when I was 2 or 3, always made sure I had paints and materials and fed my artistic drives. I think both of them are innately creative but never felt like they could go into the arts, they never had that security growing up. I think both of them wanted to make sure that I did have that opportunity. One of my earliest memories was being in pre-nursery, standing at an easel doing this splodgy green painting, and I remember I was really desperate to go to the loo, and instead of interrupting my painting I just wet myself! I think that is a great first memory to have as an artist, I think it makes me think I am on the right path, because sometimes I can really question whether taking art into a profession was the right thing to do.
I was always waking up early in the morning to draw and paint, I was always keeping notebooks and sketchbooks and things. At some point I did want to be a writer, but then I went back around to creating visual art. In some ways I felt more of a connection with writing, I felt that I might continue writing in my own time, but with art, I felt that if I didn’t dedicate my time to it I might end up losing it. To be fair, I don’t write any more, but it would have had to have been one or the other I think.
I think the two are so intrinsically linked, both in the process, and what comes out of it, and what you give to the audience. I did a fine art degree. When I was younger the two things I wanted to be were either an artist or a writer, so now I have come full circle but in the opposite direction to you.
I totally agree with you, the two are very intrinsically linked, and I find reading is a great way for me to find creativity. My imagination is not very visual; it is actually very conceptual. I struggle to visualise things in my head, which is quite funny for an artist. But I love reading so much. I love everything which is fantasy; I love everything which is a bit strange or weird, or a bit out of the ordinary.
‘In the Night Garden’ © Gabriella Jeans
That leads me on to my next question, the fact that you like weird and wonderful stuff. You say that you had some quite important things happen to you in 2014, that changed your perspective and your work.
When I moved over to Newcastle I was quite an atheist, I was quite dead set on it. But when we all moved into halls and I met everyone there, weird things started happening. Quite stupidly we did a seance on Halloween and after that, it wasn’t really anything I could put my finger on; people started having weird dreams, weird feelings... alarms would go off that hadn’t worked in years, people were having sleep paralysis and recurring dreams, but nothing too strange, it was all just peripheral.
And then I came back to London in the summer and I wasn’t thinking about it at all, I completely forgot about it. And then one night when I was alone in my parent's house, the floorboards were creaking all around where I was sitting. I wasn’t paying it any attention whatsoever, and then all of a sudden, I was sitting next to the piano in the living room and out of nowhere it was like some huge object smashed down on the keys, and it made this huge noise, it was so loud. It was so scary, I was like ‘what the fuck has just happened, that is just not physically possible’. I thought maybe our cat was inside, but there was nothing there. It got even scarier, the creaking and thumping, and my first thought was that I had lost my mind, I thought I had gone crazy. So I called someone and the first thing they said was ‘what’s that noise’, and I thought oh my god, it’s REAL. It’s not in my head. I thought I was going to die. Luckily I had read a book by Corey Taylor from Slippknott he is really into the paranormal, and what he said was ‘this is our realm, not theirs, so you can tell them to fuck off’, so in this flight or fight moment I just stood up and screamed ‘go awaaay’ and everything just stopped immediately. It was crazy.
Ever since then I have started studying the occult and paranormal and my whole life has changed.
So how has it changed your artwork?
So before then I was making all of these weird little alien figures and strange beings, my work was already quite esoteric I suppose, but I didn’t know the reason for making these things. After these events I started to actually research esoteric philosophy, I became very interested in witchcraft and paganism, and that has informed my whole practice. I understand why I am painting and making the things I am, it has given it a structure, a backbone, rather than just being abstract or whimsical.
‘The Universe Listens to You’. © Gabriella Jeans
I would describe myself now as a witch, a pagan. I am very spiritually minded and I do practise my faith. I have started to not necessarily see a distance and gap between art making and witchcraft; I think they are very closely linked and can do similar things. Now when I make art, for my own art, I see the artwork as spiritual craft in itself. For a lot of the work that I do at the moment, that isn’t paid, I put on a lot of ceremonies and rituals that are performances open to the public. I don’t draw a line between the two; I kind of traverse these boundaries that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been exposed to that side of life.
So are you a white witch or are you more interested in the darker side of esoteric practice?
Well, I have never cursed anyone, or hexed anyone, not on purpose anyway, and I am definitely more interested in the side of witchcraft which helps people. But dark and light? I don’t know if I believe in that polarisation, I definitely think that good and evil are human constructs in a lot of ways, I think it is more complex than that.
So moving on to your artwork. Where can people see it? How can people experience it?
I do have a website, Instagram and an Etsy store. I am not exhibiting at the moment because of lock down; the big part of my practise at the moment are these ceremonial practises. I did my last one just before the cut off, when London went into tier three. I don’t know when the next one will be, I don't want to endanger anyone at the moment.
So if people are interested in coming along to your performance art / ceremonies, how can they do that?
People can directly message me on Instagram, or I put posts up on Instagram announcing any upcoming ceremonies. I am interested in getting people involved with them, collaborating with people who may not even consider themselves to be an artist, who might never have been involved with making at all.
What current artists and past artists are exciting you and influencing you?
I am really interested in Tessa Farmer’s work. She takes the carcasses of insects and she attaches them in these huge terrariums, and creates these 3d tableaus, where, for example, the bees are horses for fairies made out of ant bodies, it is so grotesque yet so beautiful.
I really love Marina Abramović, I love what she has done for performance art, I think that it is incredible. Also people like Ana Mendieta; she was working a really long time ago but I really love her work. She was working a lot with themes of impermanence, working really directly with spirits and using her magick as art; I think that is really incredible. I have a lot of artists I really adore on Instagram, people like Kliu-Wong, their work is absolutely amazing; incredibly kitsch. The artists I am really interested in are incredibly varied, like Dale Lewis, who works from the UK, and he does these huge, contemporary, expressive walls. Another guy who has really influenced me is a Japanese artist called Sagaki Keita and he works a lot with micro and macro and does these tiny drawings which are really intricate, and when you stand back they have a very different meaning.
I have so many different artists informing me, and I think that is really reflected in my work, because it can be fragmented, and I don’t think I have one visual style tying it all together, which can be a bit of a nightmare sometimes, seriously!
So what is coming up next then? What are you looking to do in the future?
I have got to finish this mural, I have a couple of paintings on the go as well. I have an art residency coming up in Spain, which is with a very remote community of artists, which sounds really interesting. But more generally, I think I would like to make a bit more of a name for myself in the contemporary arts scene, more localised first on the London arts scene.
To be honest, I am really fascinated with running my ceremonies. Within my community and the people I know they are quite well regarded, and people are getting to know them, and look out for them. They are quite underground but we are creating a bit of a stir. It’s such a shame about lock down because I was really getting into a stride with these performances, but it’s definitely not the kind of thing that could work online.
My ultimate goal is to buy my own property and create my own temple; me and my friend started a cult together, which I am very proud of. It is actually very chilled out, and in some ways it is incredibly whimsical, but we are quite serious about it as well, and it gives me a lot of inspiration. It is nice having an aspiration that is a little bit different, to create a temple. It drives me on in my goals. It could be the site of so much art, and it is going to be a whole piece of art in itself one day.
‘Sometimes I feel beautiful’ © Gabriella Jeans