Jan Wurm :: Self Portraits

"Pandora" mixed media on cigar box
private collection, Oakland, California



"Odalisque" mixed media on paper 11"x14"
now on view "A Tribute to the Rotonde " Gallery Gabrichidze, Brussels


"Medusa" watercolor and chinagraph on paper 12"x10"
collection Archive Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, Berlin



"Leda and the Swan" watercolor and chinagraph on paper 10"x12"


"The Couple" oil and charcoal on paper 11"x14"
from "The Look of Love" The Loft Space@ Art Object Gallery, San Jose,
California February 2007


Jan Wurm writes:

Whether engaged by the mythology of the Greeks or the lurking myths of
family or the daily weaving of lively tales, images of Medusa or Leda
or Pandora or the Cat Caught with a Bird, all work forms a self
portrait. And as Leonardo wrote, we are all painting ourselves ( and he
warned that we be alert to our own physical shortcomings lest they
appear in our paintings ). Thus a short survey of these self depictions
are interesting not so much for the recurrent features - curly wild
hair, bumpy nose, wrinkled brow -as for the recurring themes: struggle
with the suitor ( be he bird, swan or man ), seduction, exploitation,
abandonment. All of this cloaked in storytelling and a red wig.

Jan Wurm

http://janwurm.com

Jan Wurm graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received a Master's degree from the Royal College of Art in London. Wurm's work has been exhibited in many galleries, including the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Mandeville Art Gallery of the University of California, San Diego, the Newport Harbor Art Museum Art Rental Gallery, and Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco. She has taught for the University of California Extension, and the Art Studio of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). Wurm lives and works in Berkeley, California.

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