Jan Crombie

About Jan Crombie

For some years, Oxford artist, Jan Crombie has been interested in creating work that fits together in a cumulative way and allows a narrative or mythology to gradually unfold.  This mythology lives within the work and is intertwined with the process by which it comes to life.  A number of processes are employed which include painting, assembling, drawing, animation and sculpture.  All these different ways of working allow for serendipitous connections to happen encouraging story lines that are sometimes conceived but often accidental.

Ghostly Advice [2010]
Oil on canvas
Donated by the artist, 2011

Ghostly Advice was exhibited as part of  Crombie's show The Light Turned Flimsy; a group of paintings which depict warrior/conjuror characters that belong to a tribe, loosely called the Tower Tribe. They are an invented community that due to their itinerant nature dream of constructing a stabilising monument, or tower, that will route them to a specific space.  With this in mind they continue to move around the world searching for the best site. They are not a constant group and in different eras they reinvent themselves.

Perhaps responding to the artist’s own family history, the characters often appear as refugees, perhaps escaping from disaster, or perhaps conjuring a new world. This project allowed a nuanced exploration of ideas around transience, the nature of time and the significance of ancestry.