Born in 1987 at precisely 6:10 am on a sunny Saturday in Sydney, Jacqueline Michell Butterworth is a full-time visual artist based between Sydney and London, specialising in hyper realistic oil paintings and murals.
Sophisticated and beautiful, Jacqueline's technique is informed by a veritable melting pot of historic painting traditions. From Mannerism and the Baroque to the Romantic and Symbolist movements of the late 19th Century. In fact one of her earliest pieces, Lion With Six Legs (circa 1990) denoted an interest in Surrealism that carries through to her practice today. Her ‘no longer still’ still life paintings are alternately cheeky, self-deprecating, cathartic, hopeful, and altogether deeply moving.
There are descending ladders of meaning in her work, indicative perhaps of Jacqueline’s long-standing love of symbolism as a means of storytelling - conjuring narratives that explore themes of love, loss, power, change and resilience. All the while, they playfully subvert our urban encroachment on wild habitats, depicting opulent scenes that are overrun by wildlife. Here peacocks, pelicans and peachy-faced corellas might take centrestage, cavorting like courtesans from Old Master paintings - becoming not so much gatecrashers as the life of the party.