From the architecture we inhabit to the building blocks of reality, Jill Tate surveys the visible and invisible structures that shape our shared and personal space.
Jill’s work often returns to the theme of home, regarding it as both a physical and psychological structure which permeates all levels of experience. The domestic scenes portrayed in her paintings seek to embody the abstract concepts at their root. The place we call home can feel like a sanctuary or a prison, whether made of bricks or brain cells. The uncertain tension between comfort and fear permeates the sparsely furnished environments that she creates.
Jill uses earth colours to evoke the literal and metaphysical ground from which everything arises and returns, with light playing a crucial role in illuminating form and offering hope through dark times. She considers that all things are fundamentally made of the same stuff; energy temporarily organised and subjectively experienced as solid matter, akin to a scene emerging from an arrangement of paint on a canvas.
Jill Tate (b. 1983) is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She studied on the Art & Design Foundation course at South Tyneside College before gaining a 1st Class BA (Hons) in Contemporary Photographic Practice from Northumbria University in 2005. After establishing herself as a professional architectural photographer, she shifted from making mostly photographic artwork to focus instead on painting in 2017. Tate’s paintings are held in private collections and have been exhibited throughout the UK.
