In the small self-portrait Maker of Unsaleable Goods (2020), Jacqueline PEETERS looks back on the early days of her career, lamenting – albeit with a wink - her marginal position in the art world of the nineties. The title is a line from one of PEETERS’ unpublished poems, Brussels Ballad of Supply and Demand. It reads: “Don’t look back, maker of unsaleable goods, the flesh of a red cat between thumb and index finger.” The image is dominated by a big letter M, a Majuscule for Me and Maker, thinly painted and with traces of crayon. It has the elegance of a pearl necklace, and is reminiscent of a larger work with the slightly bitter title Pearls before swine, one of the many unsold paintings that PEETERS kept stacked in her studio in the Flemish countryside for years but which fortunately have been garnering renewed attention recently.

Text plays an important role in the work of Jacqueline PEETERS. Sometimes words and names are painted directly on the canvas; sometimes they are written on a scrap of paper that is pinned or sewn onto the painting. Scraps with text often remain lying on the floor of her studio for months before PEETERS decides which painting they best belong to. But it also happens that the text disappears from a work completely and only serves as a title.

Sometimes PEETERS adopts titles of works by renowned artists: “La Mulâtresse” (after Henri Matisse), “Waiting woman” (after George Minne) or “Sommer” (after Max Beckmann). A recent series of paintings, Lenders Leihgeber Prêteurs, contains long lists of names of art collectors. They are a homage to the art of painting, to admired artists such as Balthus, Fontana and Matisse, and to pioneering art collectors.