Jocelyn Duke, an artist with a knack for inspiring emotional responses through her work, challenges adulthood and inspires viewers to take the plunge back to a place in their past with the completion of her Friends series. The series can be viewed in its entirety on her website at www.JocelynDuke.com and appointments are also available in her private studio and showroom by contacting Duke directly.
“I wanted to take people back to a time in their lives when fact and fantasy blended to one,” explains Duke. “The pieces can be interpreted in various ways – some may feel love and nostalgia as they view imagery from their childhood, while in others, the pieces may evoke feelings reminiscent of childhood nightmares due to the large-scale format of the work.”
Viewed from a single perspective in one room, thirteen over-sized cartoon-looking characters will look right at the viewer with un-blinking eyes that ask infinite numbers of questions, and prompt a range of emotions that will be different for each individual. The comic-yet-tragic characters stare at the viewer, and the viewer is challenged to stare back at them.
As thought-provoking as Duke’s work is, it’s interesting to note that most of her ideas start with a joke as the seed, and grow from there. “I’ll pick something up, make some kind of joke about it, share a dialogue with someone and, at some point, an idea is formed,” she says.
Duke is known for her ability to cater to a wide variety of tastes, from the offensive to the conservative with the various series’ she produces. However, a common thread blatantly exists and that is the inherent element of being challenging. For this series, Duke notes that: “A lot of children grow into adults and forget to know what it was to be childlike in the sense of the imaginary freedoms we all had when we were children.” Through “Friends,” she hopes to recreate that place and that experience by confronting viewers head-on in a large-scale format.
