Jane MacNeill was born in Aberdeen in 1971 and  brought up in Aviemore in the Highlands of Scotland.  She studied drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating with First Class Honours in 1996, and completed the Master of Fine Art course there two years later as a post graduate. During her time at Edinburgh College of Art she won several awards including the prestigious Richard Ford Scholarship which enabled her to spend time studying in Madrid. She was invited to take up a position at ECA as a tutor of drawing and painting, which she held until 2000 when she left in order to pursue her career as a painter.  She now lives and works near Inverness.

Jane MacNeill’s work can be found in the collections of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Wakefield Art Gallery as well as in many private collections worldwide.   Her paintings were featured on Yorkshire Television’s documentary programme “The Day I met an Angel” in 1999.

Exhibitions include:

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The Ballad of Tam Lin is a Scottish folk tale set near Selkirk in the Borders country.  It tells the story of the rescue from the Fairy people of a young knight, Tam Lin, by the brave and spirited Janet.
           
            Tam Lin has been taken from the world by the Fairy Queen and has been given stewardship by her of Carterhaugh, a place which is actually owned by Janet’s Father.  Janet, upon hearing of Tam Lin’s habit of demanding a fee of all young women who trespass into “his” garden,  makes straight for the place and challenges him to appear by picking roses.  An outraged Tam Lin materialises but Janet refuses to pay any fee to him on the grounds that Carterhaugh is her own in which to come and go.  Tam Lin then demands her virginity as his price, and soon Janet returns to her father’s house, pregnant.  Unable to name any mortal man as the father of her child, she returns to Carterhaugh, this time summoning Tam Lin by picking herbs that if taken would abort the child.  When he appears she asks him if he was ever mortal, and bound to answer this magic question, he tells her.

            It turns out that all is not well living with the Fairy Folk.  Every seven years they must pay a fee to Hell for their immortality, and Tam Lin suspects and fears that this time it will be himself who is sent as a sacrifice because he is made of flesh and blood.  However , he can be saved, and he tells Janet how.  Janet rises to the challenge and finds herself at a certain crossroads at midnight on a dark and murky Hallowe’en, traditionally the night when the spirits roam our world and the Fairies ride out, also the end of the pagan year and the start of the new.  She has instructions to pull the rider of the white horse down from his mount and to hold on to him tightly though he changes in her arms from a ferocious lion to a poisonous snake, to a burning hot bar of iron.  This done he will turn in her arms to molten lead which she must throw in the water, where at last Tam Lin will become a mortal man again.

            Janet performs the tasks, surviving the beasts and the heat and the danger, having faith that she is safe despite appearances, since it is the father of her child who she holds in her arms all along. Finally Tam Lin regains his mortal shape and is free to live with Janet and be father to their child. The Fairy Queen is furious, but apparently powerless except to rant about what she would have done to Tam Lin had she known he’d fallen in love with someone else.

            This story has many layers and is rich with symbolism; much can be made of it, but for now I will discuss only the aspects of it which have inspired my paintings. 

            Firstly I am interested in the way it is Janet who is the hero of the tale. Perhaps we are more used to the damsel being rescued by the knight in the world of fairy tales.  I like the idea that she has a sense that things are out of kilter in her world, that balance must be regained, and that she has the courage to do what needs to be done to redeem the father of her child, a man living a dark, doomed half life.

             I have chosen to paint about the moments when Janet has summoned Tam Lin and is waiting for him, those moments ripe with potential.  I have not so much illustrated these moments as translated them into my own language, and I have not been literal in my translation; for example, my Janet does not have yellow hair braided above her brow as in the ballad, and I have portrayed her green mantle as an overcoat, and sometimes as a dress.  I hope to convey Janet’s youth and innocence as well as the idea that she is an old soul.

            Green is traditionally the colour of the Fairies, but it is also the colour of nature, and the character of Janet seems to be very rooted in the earth, her feet firmly on the ground. She will not stand for the Fairies’ rules.  Her wearing of green represents nurture, motherhood, earthiness, and is also a challenge to the fairies who consider green their own.

             In one painting I have shown her holding a rose which she has just picked, a flower rich with symbolism and hidden meanings.  I have chosen a white rose to denote both Janet’s virginity and her good intentions.  Of course the rose’s petals are suggestive, and perhaps it can be seen on Janet’s face that she knows and is not altogether unhappy about what is about to happen to her.

            In the next I have shown her both slightly vulnerable, with bare feet, but also challenging, summoning Tam Lin by picking the herb with which she threatens to abort her pregnancy. I have chosen Yarrow to play the part of the scathing herb, both as a reference to the setting of the story, which is at the confluence of the rivers Ettrick and Yarrow, and for its oxalic acid content which is harmful to pregnant women.

            In the third painting I have shown her waiting in the dark and mist at Miles Cross.  The crossroads is symbolic of the meeting of two worlds, a place of ultimate potential.  The cross of course can be seen to symbolise self sacrifice and redemption. 

            I have used blue as my own symbol of the meeting of two worlds.  Blue denotes mystery, spirituality, twilight. I have portrayed Tam Lin as a blue figure in blue surroundings.  He is a slightly ominous presence, described in the ballad as being at once there and not there, which for me reflects his status both as a scary masculine spirit who demands a cruel fee of well-to-do young females, and as a rather helpless individual whose very existence is in question; a lost soul, if you like.  I have also used gold in my portrayal of Tam Lin to show both his otherworldliness and his value to Janet.

            The fact that the story is set in a garden is what ties the subject matter to the rest of my work.  I see the Garden as a symbol for the human soul; it is full of symbolic imagery and is a rich source of inspiration for me.  I have also painted about a certain other, more well known garden and expect to do so again and again. There is an endless fascination for me in the characters who act out their stories in the archetypal Garden, and also in the plants that grow there and the direct link they seem to have with the divine or otherworldly; in Eden, the Tree of Life, and in Tam Lin’s garden, the rose bushes and herbs.  Both gardens set the scene for tales of upset, unrest and unbalance where redemption is required for a return to Paradise. For me, the struggle for balance and understanding, for life over endings and darkness in the human psyche is represented by the stories being acted out in the eternal Garden, and the characters, the plants and beasts therein are archetypes representing aspects of ourselves. 

jane macneill, february 2008