Jodie Hart has been immersed in art since childhood, first learning to paint by watching her father, a plein air painter from Burlington Ontario. She was inspired from a very young age by his collection of books on Seventeenth Century Dutch and Flemish painting. She remembers pouring over images of paintings by Rembrandt and studying his use of light and shadow.
Jodie completed her Diploma of Illustration at Sheridan College in 1998, and after winning numerous scholarships attended McMaster University where she continued her art studies, graduating in 2007. After experimenting with various subject matter she now focuses almost exclusively on allegorical still life painting. Her paintings are a reminder of the transience of the trappings of life and of life itself. To achieve this she uses dramatic lighting, often in the form of a direct sunbeam. The sweeping light gives the objects a real sense of being caught in a moment in time. They are changing before our eyes, but for this moment they are immortal.
“Such use of light is a result of my deep admiration for the work of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Vermeer,” she says. “The spiritual quality of their dramatically lit scenes are the inspiration for most of my work. The compositions are intended to provide a twist on the Memento Mori theme, offering a more optimistic and celebratory perspective.”