An analytical review of the work of Jenny Saville.

In this essay i am going to discuss the work of the artist 'Jenny Saville', an english oil painter who's work is very harsh and vulgar, she paints trauma victims, surgery patients, transexuals and transvestites in such an awful but beautiful way. In this essay i am going to discuss Jenny Saville's techniques, materials, processes etc and the effect they have on her audience.

Saville is famous for her paintings of overweight, disfigured ugly or surgery patients. Some of her work is of slaughtered pigs and women pressed awkwardly against glass sheets. Because of the size of the canvas Jenny Saville likes to work on, and the size of the models she paints, the viewer seems to feel like a small child looking up at a huge picture, a huge truthful picture that cannot be escaped from. Jennie Saville seems to enjoy painting the uncomfortable truth and displaying it in a such a large unavoidable way, her audience cannot escape it. Saville doesnt want to hide away the overweight, ugly, disfigured people, she wants them to be admired.

Saville uses oil paint on a huge larger than life size scale canvas. she paints in a way similar to finger painting and she pays very little attention to detail, she doesnt bother about keeping inside the lines or using repetitive brush strokes in one direction, because her work is to put across a message that no one is perfect, so therefore her work of ‘un-perfect’ people should be painted in an ‘un-perfect’ way.

She uses pigmented hues and tones in her work and the way she uses her almost creamy oil paint gives the skin a poured or smeared appearance, making it seem almost impossible to look realistic.

In conclusion, i really like the harsh vulgar work of Jennie Saville, you have to look behind the disgusting far-fetched images, and find the hidden messages behind each individual piece of work she has created in such a beautiful yet ugly way. I have enjoyed looking at Savilles work and i would definitely like to use her techniques and processes in my own work in the future.