Some Heart-Sensed Power by Jacquie Burgess

The language of soul is poetic, subtle and wild - music might carry the truth of it to you on the wind. In our encounter with the work we are disarmed of our rationality; the language of the intellect alone is ultimately too small, cannot contain it, for we are at the mercy of nature and her unbroken blessing.
Janet invites us across the threshold of a secret.

A place not usually visible except through some heart-sensed power and longing, a place mysterious and ever-changing, an unknown country, yet felt and somehow remembered. She does not deal in certainties, indeed she exposes the turmoil of the inner life and the struggle involved in holding the centre, the challenge to be real - something she undertakes with breathtaking skill. But a rich fertility is inherent in the landscapes born of this struggle which invites us to be moved, to be touched by wonder and meaning.

We can sense the deep kinship of Janet's sensibility with the landscape of Ireland, the ground on which we stand, in all its nuances of pattern and change - and this is evidenced over and over again in the work.

The artist herself is a strong and visible guiding presence within the paintings, the fine line, exposing and holding both the pain and the rapture, with abiding grace and fierce beauty. Tenderness is expressed in colour and texture along with the interplay of elemental things - a flash of light, a sea foaming with life, a drumbeat from the deep earth - inviting us to participate in our own dance with greater depth and presence.

We are offered a meeting place between inner and outer, between the natural world and our personal suffering, that is suffused with the possibility and hope of what we may be. Jacquie Burgess 2002 ©