Janus – Stories at the Threshold
Jill Baird
Janus is an exhibition by artist and art therapist Jill Baird, now living in Wales but having spent many years living in Connemara and County Limerick. Janus the Roman God of passages, doors, beginnings and endings, has been represented at times with two faces: one looking forward the other looking back, this exhibition asks us to pause at the threshold.
In this exhibition Jill’s work suggests both invitation and boundary. The large pitch pine double doors, each side holding eight panels have been painted with deep thought and to perfection. They can be read separately or together, like memories gathered over time. Some of these panels speak of beginnings, some endings and others of extraordinary transformation and choices.
Perhaps, particularly as an art therapist Jill knows something about thresholds, of that space occupied between distress and possibility, where there is an need to witness without taking over and to make space without filling it. Arranged as they are in this exhibition, the doors suggest entry and departure. Time spent looking at each panel could have us asking what we might be leaving behind and what we are ready to approach.
Jill’s hand made butterflies speak of transformation, fragility and change and again they remind us that becoming something else can be both beautiful and uncertain.
Her paintings are executed with precision and carefully balanced. They encourage us to look closely, to notice repetition and rhythm and to allow our eyes and mind to settle.
This body of work by Jill spans a number of years though the theme and conversation in her work is a constant. This is a conversation we need now more than ever. In a world that is determined to make us hurry, to move on and to consume there is another possibility. To stop, to stand at the threshold and to allow ourselves to be astounded by the richness that we already have.
Jill Baird – Artist Statement
In my travels some years ago, I passed through Bali and noticed that in the centre of many of the outdoor enclosures of Hindu Temples, there stood a solitary door. These doors had a doorframe and steps. I thought of Janus, the two-headed Roman God who looks both to the past and to the future. He is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time. I wanted to create something that would encompass this as much as possible.
The installation was created while I was living in Limerick, in around 2012. In a salvage yard I found two doors, beautiful pitch pine, perhaps from a convent, eight feet tall, and three feet wide. They were built to shrink and stretch according to the weather, and were outdoors when I came across them. It was shown for about two years in the Medical Library in UCHL, but the heating created too much shrinkage. Since then, Gerry Carew has been looking after them for me, and I’m delighted that they are once more on show, At 6s&7s Gallery in Tipperary Town.
For the first side, SCIENCE, I leave bare the centre of two panels. The wood is marked with beautiful lines and knots. I follow these lines, expanding outwards, reflecting how science and thought derive from nature, appearing more and more abstract while delving deeper and deeper into our reality.
SYMBOL Is a reflection on the multitude of images which, often unconsciously, influence our thoughts and actions in our increasingly complex multi-cultural modern world. It is also a reflection on how we often abuse the knowledge and abilities that we have gained. One of those abuses is warfare, a movement away from tolerance and compassion to hatred, power, corruption, greed and persecution.
In MIND, I look out at the world, with understanding, compassion? Perhaps. I have used images of a more personal nature which help me to counterbalance the turbulence and complexity of Symbol, leading to a more peaceful state of Mindfulness. These are pictures that help me breathe.
In MANDALA, Mind flows into abstract – the representation of consciousness in its wholeness, encompassing clarity, possibility, presence and potential.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
I wondered what I could make that would complement the doors, and came up with the idea of butterflies, quite fragile and symbolic of the process of transformation that I had experienced while undergoing treatment for Leukaemia in Galway in 1994. In Chaos Theory, the Butterfly Effect is the idea that a tiny action can have huge effects.
~ Jill Baird
