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Celtic Cross

Celtic Rainbow Portal

Fount of Creativity

Vale of Tears

Norman Stained-glass Portal

Tudor-Stuart Screen

Wings Portal

Tree of Life Portal

Family Tree

Oriental Portal

Spirit of Life

Scales

Endless Series

Phoenix Triptych

Canada: Harmony...

Nanaimo: Rainbows' End

Dare to be Different

Yin-Yang Portal

Series: HARMONY - The Hand of God in Asia
Kaleidoscope	Ta Prohm	Lotus	Gobi	East meets West	Malaysia Portiere & Path	India Portiere & Beyond	Banyan Triptych

Sky, Sea & Sand

After the Rain

Covid Rainbow

CECILE JACOBS ‘Cecile Jacobs’ is the pseudonym created by Sheila James in 2000 to separate her growing artwork from her other creative output – this name being the approximate Latin equivalent of her own. Since emigrating from her native England in 1979, she has lived coast-to-coast westwards across Canada from St. John’s Newfoundland, via Montreal and Edmonton to Nanaimo (Vancouver Island), before finally settling in Coldstream, British Columbia. She holds a B.A. (Honours) from Sheffield University (UK) in English Language & Literature, Music, History and separately in Education. She has used these subjects in a variety of occupations, primarily as a researcher and writer of history concentrating on true facts that expose propaganda, combined with working as a professional performer, theatre director, choreographer, media analyst and events producer. In 1998 Sheila underwent surgery for breast cancer which changed her life forever. Not expecting to survive, she began in her spare time to create portals and large wall hangings for her family to keep as heirlooms - she had learnt embroidery in primary school but then had to study Latin rather than art or any crafts. Within five years she realised, in being invited to exhibit to the public, that she had unwittingly developed a unique artform of mixed media, bringing together paint, hand embroidery, appliqué and other media, using Celtic designs (ancient and new) to express ideas. From 2003 to 2013, her other work was put on hold as the artwork of Cecile Jacobs has taken over her life full-time. Cecile’s many massive wall-hangings are not intended simply as pretty pictures but as the medium for more complex ideas, messages and inspiration. They contain symbols of the positive power of Life, and have such titles as Spirit of Life, Endless Optimism. The central triptych - The Phoenix Cycle: Fire on the Mountain - shows the creative power of devastation. Life can be better than ever after devastation. Her work has been exhibited at the Banff Centre, and she has been invited to present solo exhibitions of her artwork, including at the Edmonton CBC Centre and the Discovery Gallery at the Nanaimo Museum. Her work can now be found in private hands and institutions in four continents. From 2006-2008 she lived and worked throughout Asia and was inspired to create the HARMONY: the Hand of God in Asia Series, which was completed in summer 2011. Cecile Jacobs works with acrylic paint/ dyes on fabric. Her Celtic designs are a blend of ancient and newly-created modern. She uses the ‘endless’ Celtic style to express recurrent philosophical, intellectual and spiritual themes: The Oneness of Being: the Spirit that runs through All Things Yin Yang I: the Balance and Harmony of the Universe Yin Yang II: Good can come from Bad Creativity and Beauty grow best in harsh environments The Cycle of Life: renewal and proliferation after devastation. Top of page REVIEW OF CECILE JACOBS' WORK G. Harry Jamieson, Ph.D., Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (Author of Visual Communication: more than meets the eye, Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007) I appreciated the opportunity to see Cecile Jacobs’ majestic artwork while I was in Canada and to contemplate its scale, complexity and originality. Words are inadequate to give voice to all the internal relationships that each of her works offers to the viewer. One is presented with symbolic forms to decipher, all of which add up to a rich source of information to those able or willing to search for the connections. The work can then become a wonder of the mind that conjures up the ideas (the art) and puts them there in space through the application of various media (the craft). For too long aesthetics has existed in the woolly area of notions of taste, while it is my opinion that there is something more fundamental, which does not rest upon value judgements of ‘niceness’. The fundamentals I have in mind are those springing from identification with the form and all that this implies in terms of seeing relationships. Of course there is also the semiotic factor in much of Cecile Jacobs’ work. Thus the viewer has the possibility of seeing relationships in two distinct ways: the symbolic (stories/ histories behind the symbol); and the perceptual (form, shapes, colours, differences, similarities, and texture of that presented to the eye without the necessity of giving meaning to the experience). What Cecile Jacobs presents could also be partially expressed in terms of Zen, the need to quieten the mind in the presence of the object, to focus on the work without distraction. Words cannot do justice to her creative output, which is truly amazing. Her art work still fills me with wonder. If you wanted a demonstration of the pure aesthetic, this is it - with a symbolic dimension to add to the wonder.

GHJ (December 2003).

Postscript (commenting on the ‘Cecile Jacobs’ Spirit of Life Exhibition, September - December/2012): Such a grand collection, all of which bears your personal imprint. Over the years I have been fascinated not only by the artistic quality of your work, but also by the way in which you have taken a theme and given it form, a form with such intricacy that is amazing. In addition to any symbolism, which itself is very appealing, I always detect in your work the acute sensing of relationships of tone, colour, contrast and similarity. It is a mark of intelligence, the mind at work, drawing together in one place a unity, a visual feast for the eye. And, like a feast, the viewer is called upon to take an active part in perceiving both the subtlety of form, and decoding the message behind the symbols. Except at a very crude level, words are inadequate to describe the range of sensitivity that the visual sense can call upon. There are acres of books on aesthetics. Your work says it all without a word being spoken.

GHJ (September 2012).