Jayne Armstrong

"In a world driven by a mass production and consumption, I privilege the slow, the handmade, the authentic. Each piece is designed and made by me over time using a combination of traditional, modern and experimental processes."

Jayne Armstrong is an artist and maker in wood based in Brittany, France. Jayne works primarily in fresh, green wood to explore the sculptural and aesthetic possibilities of a material that moves and changes shape as it dries. Her work is intended to play with the boundary between sculpture and function and to challenge expectations of the material itself. The resulting forms are fluid, undulating and often monochromatic in tone. 

Jayne’s background as an academic within the field of cultural studies informs and underpins her approach to her work. Her work is experimental and exploratory, drawing from art history, design history and philosophy. She describes her work as a dialogue between material, concept, technology and technique and her process as ‘an instinctive desire to work against the grain’.

Each individual piece begins life with a chainsaw, then a woodturning lathe where it is often turned to no more than 1 or 2 millimeters before being left to dry naturally. Once dry, Jayne carves, bleaches, stains, burns, embellishes, paints, oils and waxes. Jayne also creates distinctive functional vessels and platters in seasoned woods. Each piece is unique and the outcome of multiple processes.

Importantly for Jayne, much of her wood is sourced locally. Some will come from her own garden which she cuts and chainsaws herself. Other sources are friends, neighbours, the local arboriculteur and the communal forest.  Worked in this way, each piece of wood has a story rooted in time and place.