Jill Tegan Doherty

Jill Tegan Doherty is a graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design and currently a practicing artist based in London. In her work Jill actively engages with the surrealist tradition, her work serves as an investigation into the subconscious, in which she transposes the fleeting imagery that exists at the periphery of human imagination. Her work explores these musings making her imagery visible to the collective human consciousness. Her morphing of various species together prompts certain thought processes in the viewer, although what is culminated is an imagined form, the use of familiar subject matter forces a certain involuntary recollection. This recollection can lead to a more intense and intimate reaction to the imagery as it can trigger personal memories and allows the viewer to relate to the imagery thrust upon them. There is an underlying haunting quality to the work, a certain hardship of social interaction and an air of confusion and entrapment. Each individual painting is riddled with subtle clues, forming suggestions to induce the mind into a certain ideation. Doherty toys with this open catalyst of deliberation in the viewer, tempting them to climb deeper into the unraveling knots of the symbolism. She likes to provoke the onlooker’s own subconscious with her use of unnerving imagery of disfigurement and biomorphic representations of human form. Dipping into this strange realm in which representation and fantasy meld, this artist emerges with unsettling images of a fragile and rare beauty.