Nikki Jabs is an illustrative artist who lives by the sea in South-Western Australia. She creates figurative drawings and paintings that explore the internal nature of emotion and the delicate art of holding and expressing these internal states. An aesthete at heart, she is continuously inspired by the beauty and emotional intensity of the world; art, nature, music, literature, fashion, and interior design, are all sources of inspiration and means for emotional expression.
The recurring images within her work are connected to a favourite paper written by Freud titled 'Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.’ Freud proposes that unresolved experiences resurface through repetition, the past is repeated in the present.
Here, the use of repetition serves as both a visual and psychological process. An image may appear again and again, seemingly identical however always altered. It may be a different colour, brush-stroke or pencil line. It is the same but can never be perfectly replicated. Each image carries the trace of its past, as it transforms into something new. The working lines are often left visible or added back in, memory of the original form and evidence of the working through.
When not making her own art, Nikki works as a creative arts psychotherapist, supporting others to connect with their own unconscious processes.
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