Jeanne Hoffman’s “Dream Window” Exhibit

The friendly security guard sanitizes hands before buzzing the door, which opens into one long rectangular room containing a wooden desk. The walls are completely white except for one blue wall that sits at the far side of the gallery, and a blue panel displaying three or so of Jeanne’s paintings. Hoffman, whose work has appeared at Stellenbosch, Glen Carlou, and SMAC art galleries, is a South African contemporary/postwar artist, and travels extensively as part of her collaborative efforts.

Set upon the Italian cotton canvases in wooden box frames is a mixture of buildings, interiors, and flowers – painted or abstract, and rendered in multiple; as thin, watery, acrylic layers of soft pinks, peach, greys, blues and little bursts of green – the depiction of which is beautiful and painterly.

The names given to each artwork read like small, docile thought snippets from a journal and add strongly to interpretation, with titles such as “Reading the world from a gradually widening point of view.” “Self Portrait as a Vase” for example, conveys the tenacious connection a flower vase must have with a window, absorbing the sun and shade in cycles, as it peers endlessly into nature. The orange and dark brown vase sits centrally on a yellow windowsill, its flowers behind a curtain, where they attempt to peek in from each of the sides.