Gayle Payne
Artist & Art Educator
This Archetype series emerged from a series of experiences around transitions of education.
The painted series explores the connection between the fluidity of paint as a catalyst for memory absorption and looking into the subconscious underworlds. Because the paintings are worked on through an automatism state of being they have a rawness and reliance on ‘muscle memory’ of form in the process of making. It is neither abstract nor representational but perhaps a kind of dream state, a suspension of time.An understanding of the work has been found through research into Carl Jung’s Archetypes.
This series focusses on the personal symbolism of the artist through collective life themes that many of us play out. The artist explores notions of the: mother/child, sacrifice, triumphant/wounded, animal/expert, monster/purity, vulnerability/aggressor.Gayle is an artist and art educator and has a Degree in Performance Art from Dartington College of Arts. Her art practice can be seen through experimental mark-making, oil painting on stretched canvas and hanging canvases.Work is available for sale on request, please contact the artist. The work would suit shared shows, group exhibitions of similar themes and solo shows. Please get in touch if you would like to see the work and the broader practice or you think the work would be well placed in your institution or collection. [email protected]
Volcanic Figure
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
Volcanic Figure
Oil on canvas 37x55 inches 2025
Light of the day
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
Light of the Day.
Oil on canvas 37x30 inches 2024
FOOLS GOLD
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
Fools Gold, Oil on canvas 37x37 inches 2024
Mother
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
Mother, Oil on canvas 37x37 inches 2024
The Chair
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
The Chair, Oil on canvas 37x37 inches 2026
Dark Night
Archetype Series, discovering narratives through subconscious painting.
Dark Night, Oil on canvas 37x37 inches 2022
Volcanic Figure
For me this work is rich in symbolism of Judgement, of society bystanders and watchers. A battle at a table where other forces turn up, hidden beings.It started with simple movement and mark-making. I put my movement and body into the work. The figure arrived first and seemed to stay. Usually early findings in the work transmute into something else as I process what is going on. The painting is a single image but usually a record of the fluidity of process.
I see the blue figure as being held up and supported by some sort of energies or beings at the bottom left.
The ancient beings top left v’s the bystanders on the right, the viewers, not just there but came to be seated.
I can only really read the symbolism after the process. The blue figure could be linked to Kali. The Volcano, fire energy, death, destruction but renewal and richer soil. The tables symbols of the reasoned, logical, scientific and authoritarian power.
I have sat at many tables to speak to the state system, but that person on the other side is not in the painting, you are that person looking at the scene.
Light of the Day
In the light of the day. This work challenges me in content and meaning. During painting sessions I just paint. I have found this phrase Oceanic State and Oceanic Feeling by Freud and I think it describes my painting state well. I cannot concern myself with feelings or judgement whilst painting because that gets in the way. It is a mindset, a vibe, a feeling that leads me through the painting process. I access a place that is unfathomable to me in which work emerges. Not something I chose to paint but I feel this is about, the untameable and the city/society, creation and destruction, morphing between states, the unmaking and remaking that goes on daily.The liquid state of the oil paint helps in creation and destruction of form in the painting process. The red moon one a giant female figure.
Fools gold
Fools Gold title came after the work because I thought about the chaos experienced when you worship the wrong thing. When society structures turn dark and shadowy and it’s not working, then a kind of clinging and pushing envelopes. A sinking.
In my experience this was the school system, the white shirt is devoured, its arms turning into something else. The child is nowhere to be found or seen.
The working thought around this painting was Monster. I thought alot about how we demonise and other extreme behaviours, how the scapegoat scenario happens. How we love to hold to example of bad.
Along with this piece a 3D sculpture appeared. It is the manifestation of this painting, called School Beast.
I noticed when painting that if I turned it upside-down that the painting changed. Actually I think it started this way and was then turned upside down, I like the confusion of this. The beast in the painting sprouted wings, like a winged dog. I like the complexity of this image. My experience and thoughts and processing of life themes swirl around and it is complex, it is unspeakable.
Mother
We all have experience of the mother architype, it is part of our experience and our lineage. I as a mother of two.
There were many elements that appeared during the painting process of this. A creature on the left like a large otter with its hand across the face of the upside down figure, silencing the figure. A mother figure in chaos and angular not soft and calm. The figure is apart of the darkness but also the earth. The air thick with yellow that is not warming but oppressive overbearing and seeping into everything.
I felt like it was a battle and I remember looking at the Delacroix painting Lady of Liberty but the figure inverted.
The Chair
The Chair holds, it takes on forms, absorbs them. In dream and the resting head takes on a more primitive form. It is held and creatures try to come but they are also reconfigured in the chaos of being.
Dark Knight
Dark Night is walking into the darkness. The head already consumed by it. A male figure, perhaps the animus of the female unconscious. This is the Jungian meaning of animus but it also means anger, betrayal and hate and I think these feeling lead you into a dark hole. The female unconscious of a male is called anima.
There is no way out, perhaps the beginning of a journey. Walking through the dark is a reoccurring presence for some. The dark is red and green and the figure emerges from red and green brushstrokes that claw at the figure. There is a what I like to call a switch at the bottom of the painting. Two definite colours against one another.
The bottom of the painting n the left is lighter. I feel that you never really rise above themes or stuff in life but sometimes fall out of it, like a trap door that puts you somewhere better. A necessary process.