Amber Jahn – a radiant artist

From time to time, lite­ra­tu­re’s wild boar ^[1]Let me explain for my English rea­ders : In France, the author is known as the San­glier lit­té­raire, term which rough­ly trans­lates to : the wild boar of lite­ra­ture. – though proud of his usual desi­gna­tion – embarks on expe­di­tions into other domains, pre­fe­ra­bly fine art and pain­ting, a uni­verse that still fas­ci­nates him each time he sets foot in a museum or finds him­self on a site dedi­ca­ted to pain­ting. Now ima­gine his hap­pi­ness when he met, on About.Me, a young artist whose pain­tings have suc­cee­ded in kee­ping him locked to his screen for hours on hours spent wat­ching, resear­ching and feas­ting on pain­tings whose force swept him far away in a tor­rent of colours from his usual day­time occu­pa­tions. And how to express his hap­pi­ness when the artist in ques­tion actual­ly replied to an email sent in a des­pe­rate attempt to start a conver­sa­tion about eve­ry­thing and nothing, but above all in order to get to see more of those radiant bodies which Amber Jahn – also known as #jahn­nie­girl – knows how to paint in such an exqui­site way.

Some small conver­sa­tion was enough to convince me to dedi­cate an article to this young woman whose deep dark eyes reflect the colours of the uni­verse that she in turn ren­ders in pain­ting, all the while aware of the brute force slee­ping at the heart of the smal­lest things, rea­dy to respond to the sligh­test beam of sun­light and to explode in the faces of the una­ware. An artist who confers to the human flesh a radiant consis­tence that makes one want to touch and feel and praise all at the same time. In short, an artist that has all it takes in order to seduce lite­ra­tu­re’s wild boar who, in no time at all, left his den in order to feel the sal­ty air coming in over the bay of San Die­go, the town of the extreme south of Cali­for­nia where Amber has taken up resi­dence, obeying to the impulse writ­ten into the Ame­ri­cans” DNA and to the call that made the impres­sio­nist pain­ters leave Paris, 150 years ago, for sou­thern France where the sun makes the colours glow with une­qual­led brilliance.

Amber Jahn – figu­ra­tive art and rich inspiration

Amber Jahn is part of San Die­go’s live­ly artis­tic milieu  where she regu­lar­ly takes part in col­lec­tive per­for­mances and so-cal­led art bat­tles orga­ni­sed by seve­ral pro­mo­tion com­pa­nies, art col­lec­tives and enter­tain­ment venues such as Bass­Tribe, The Bel­ly up, On Point Pro­mo­tions, Sli­cEn­ter­tain­ment, UX31, Spin­Night­club, 69 Revive, Ato­mic Night­Club, Infu­sion Pro­ject or RAW Artists, and in fund-rai­sers bene­fit­ting can­cer research such as Stand-up for the cure or Sum­mer Melt­down Autism Awa­re­ness Arts Fes­ti­val. Her pain­tings are regu­lar­ly expo­sed either in a more clas­sic fashion in art gal­le­ries as for example Kett­ner Arts Gal­le­ry,  or in rather unor­tho­dox places like Cof­fee shops as Fil­ter and Te Mun­do, Palm Spring’s Cen­ter for health and sexua­li­ty or a San Die­go sex-shop like Plea­sures & Trea­sures. Taverns also exhi­bit her art  as well as host her pain­ting live as a band or DJ play music.

Those who embark on a jour­ney to dis­co­ver the rich works of Amber Mae Jahn will find that they are confron­ted to an unwa­ve­ring artist with lots of dif­ferent aspects concer­ning her tech­niques and her sub­jects. Being a firm belie­ver in impro­vi­sa­tion and per­for­mance, she is used to lea­ving her stu­dio and wor­king in places as divers as night-clubs or the beaches of the Paci­fic ocean, while kee­ping a habit of wor­king in bet­ter pro­tec­ted places for pieces that need a more patient appli­ca­tion. Being able to handle the brush, the knife, the pen and the came­ra, she com­mands a wide varie­ty of tech­niques that she puts to the ser­vice of her art which, with its clear lines, its reduc­tions and its wide colour­ful stretches can­not deny a cer­tain link to the comic strip.

As for the sub­jects, if the nude makes for a large part of her artis­tic pro­duc­tion, there are also other sub­jects to be found as the por­trait, the still-life and all sorts of com­po­si­tions which it is at times dif­fi­cult to clas­si­fy but that may be cal­led stu­dies in colour or per­haps even colour-tem­pests. Howe­ver that may be, Amber Jahn’s pain­ting is reso­lu­te­ly figu­ra­tive without being in any way retro or regres­sive. Her female figures radiate the serene confi­dence of her that has found her place in life and who either contem­plates the uni­verse with a cer­tain dis­tance (like the pre­gnant woman who hap­pi­ly exposes her charms with abso­lute confi­dence) or defies it, safe behind a shield of total tran­quilli­ty that nothing seems to be able to harm.

As for the can­vas, Amber has a strong pre­di­lec­tion for recy­cled mate­rial, a pre­di­lec­tion she explains with the recy­cled objects” life that confers to them a sup­ple­men­ta­ry ins­pi­ra­tion that pre-dates (and pos­si­bly influences) the artist’s :

« Most of my pain­ting sup­plies and can­vas are rescued, recy­cled, found or gif­ted items. […] I genui­ne­ly pre­fer to use the cha­rac­ter and aban­do­ned sur­faces of old shel­ving, wood planks, and vin­tage win­dows for the exis­ting ins­pi­ra­tion such a piece pre­sents. » ^[2]Quo­ted from the Bio of Amber’s Google+ pro­file.

At the centre of her art – the Nude

The nude – and above all the femi­nine nude – is ever present in Amber Jahn’s art­work, and the (future) Mother hap­pi­ly mingles with the Domi­na­trix. The women expose them­selves in all the splen­dour of their ripe and tight flesh, though there is one par­ti­cu­la­ri­ty that may dis­turb, a trait that appears again and again on a large num­ber of her pain­tings : the absence of a face and some­times even of nipples, as if those attri­butes had the power to create an indi­vi­dual capable of muti­ny against cap­ti­vi­ty inside a too small frame. Unless the artist wants to give a more uni­ver­sal cha­rac­ter to her sub­jects, a vali­di­ty that extends to the whole spe­cies. There is, among those women, a wide varie­ty though cer­tain types appear again and again like the woman lying on her back (some­times pre­gnant, some­times not) and contem­pla­ting the world with her absent face, or the woman stan­ding proud which one would like to ima­gine capable of defying the whole world – if only she had eyes to stare. Along­side those types, there is the sha­me­less woman, the woman with her mate and even the woman redu­ced to her geni­tal parts. All of them sha­ring, beyond their dif­fe­rences, a ravi­shing beau­ty, dis­tant at times, radiant always, a beau­ty that attracts the looks which the crea­tures of the brush are inca­pable of returning.

A wink to abstraction

It comes as no sur­prise that my favou­rite pieces are the women repre­sen­ted by Amber Jahn in all their splen­dour. But I won’t hide from you the fact that there are other sub­jects in her reper­toire that, while being evi­dence to her mas­ter­ful exe­cu­tion, will seduce the art enthu­siast. There are, after all, other obses­sions than my own and other beau­ties than that of women.

Amber Jahn is also a pho­to­gra­pher and she knows how to handle her came­ra. And some­times it’s the pho­to­graphs, as unex­pec­ted and unu­sual as it may seem, that make a wink to abs­trac­tion, as so elo­quent­ly demons­tra­ted by the one of an artichoke.

And then there are pain­tings, pla­ced somew­here in bet­ween a figu­ra­tive approach and a cer­tain strife to abs­trac­tion, pain­tings that are a hymn to colour, like the Hum­ming­bird that cele­brates pain­ting itself, capable of drow­ning the world in a deluge of colours :

Cali­for­nian inspiration

It is of course impos­sible to grasp the brush without being under the influence of a mul­ti-secu­lar his­to­ry. Amber Jahn is no excep­tion to this rule and some her pain­tings quote euro­pean reli­gious art as for example the Cali­for­nia Trip­tyque with its colours that make one think of those of sun­set, its form inhe­ri­ted from medie­val and renais­sance pain­ting and its ico­no­gra­phy that refers to the tree of life and the for­bid­den fruit, a sub­ject that one also finds in a pain­ting exe­cu­ted in col­la­bo­ra­tion with Al Scholl. This pain­ting, Girl with an apple, is by the way the result of a life per­for­mance, an approach to crea­tion that Amber is par­ti­cu­lar­ly fond of. One will take note, in the two illus­tra­tions, of the inten­si­ty of the colours, an effect in large part due to the jux­ta­po­si­tion of warm and cool colours on which the close proxi­mi­ty has a magni­fying effect.

Slow­ly but sur­ely I come to the end of my jour­ney through the pas­sio­nate uni­verse of Amber Jahn’s pain­tings, but I won’t leave my estee­med rea­ders without indi­ca­ting them ano­ther impor­tant source of her ins­pi­ra­tion : The eve­ry­day life of the west coast. Is it not impos­sible to contem­plate without a smile Amber’s Sk8er Chic, the colour­ful essence of all the girls and the women one is used to see ska­ting along the Paci­fic coast with hard­ly a stitch from wat­ching all those Ame­ri­can movies that would make you believe that you have now come to the para­dise of joy and delight, somew­here bet­ween Los Angeles and San Francisco ?

A candle to be taken over

I have had great plea­sure in wri­ting this modest article, in del­ving into the rich works that Amber had the kind­ness to make avai­lable to me, in let­ting my ima­gi­na­tion get taken away by an almost mari­time cur­rent of colours while dis­co­ve­ring, slow­ly but stea­di­ly, a woman who ful­ly com­mits her­self to her art, in sha­ring (in trying to at least) the enthu­siasm I felt while dis­co­ve­ring a world of pain­ting of vibrant heat. I lack the time and the eru­di­tion to com­pose the work that would do jus­tice to Amber Jahn, but I do know my own short-comings and patient­ly wait for others to take up the task, a plea­sure I hap­pi­ly concede to more capable hands.

Small gal­le­ry

I get the impres­sion that I lite­ral­ly stuf­fed my article with pain­tings, but how could I resist the temp­ta­tion of pre­sen­ting a very large num­ber when each one of those small won­ders has the power to make me fall for it ? But as an author has to take care that his words are rea­dable and do not get drow­ned, I had to hold back an even lar­ger num­ber of images. So, in order to make avai­lable to you a large varie­ty of Amber’s pain­tings, I deci­ded to put toge­ther a small gal­le­ry. But as even this has to be limi­ted, I invite you to go on your own expe­di­tion and to browse the artist’s pro­files on the social net­works as for example Face­book where Amber is present with a large choice of her works.