My work is intended to evoke a direct sensory/optical response, rather than a memory-based one. The main idea is color acting as a physical substance-- elastic, expanding, bulging, opaque, translucent, bodiless, luminous, milky, dense, inside or outside, in ripples, and layers, tilting, tensing or flattening in or on the picture plane. 

 

My subjects  are always connected to the pursuit of  ‘surface' color, something I  first engaged with teaching color theory and  a subject called “the modes of appearance” –- a typology of reflected color sensations in object surfaces in the real world, codified in a book, The World Of Colour, as "film color, mirror color, luster, glimmer, glitter, shimmer, and volume color."  Although as an abstract painter I  had no interest in the literal depiction of these reflections or objects, I became fascinated with the notion of  depicting physical qualities of color: ideas of weightlessness, translucence, illuminance, film, and thickness;  color as its own substance that can appear to stretch, become milky, glassy, or dense and assume different identities, without depicting anything we 'know'.I wanted to elicit these qualities without being familiar or nostalgic. The work strives to connect shape with surface, creating a sense of tactility and depth, using only color and relationships.

 

The paintings often elicit a surprised reaction when first seen in person, because of their very luminous,  matte surfaces,  which photographs never accurately convey. They have been likened to small frescoes— in fact for years I thought about pre-Christian and Renaissance frescoes;  made extensive sketches and notes while visiting  Italy on sabbatical, excited by the architecture, geometry, and  floating qualities of  space and color  embedded in  wall paintings in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Tuscany. 

 

As to my process:  paint is usually applied rapidly, as an almost  thoughtless drawing with a brush, to discover shapes I haven’t seen before, and without a definitive idea of the colors I’ll be using. The paint builds to become quite lumpy and rough, it will  go through many changes until it reaches  a definitive stage which becomes the final  drawing I use. I  revise, analyze, alter perspective, add or subtract shapes, do multiple studies on paper, with or without color, sometimes in gouache, sometimes in pencil or ink along the way. If I  have an idea I  already like from drawings or my small “vocabulary books” of studies dedicated to one type of shape, curve or relationship, I will enlarge and transfer it to a wood panel. Sometimes I do many small gouache studies that look similar to the large paintings on wood, without making changes, and other times I work from pencil drawings that have no color at all. There are many approaches to working -- I am never sure what will make a useful composition, but I'm always striving to surprise myself with a relationship that seems odd or unfamiliar.  

 

My paintings may take several weeks or even months to complete, due to color mixing, tests, redrawing, applying multiple glazes (very thin watery layers) and sanding to eliminate brush marks or fluctuations in the surface. I use Flashe, a vinyl-based paint, which dries to a rock-hard finish almost like concrete, that is sanded repeatedly between  applications  to a dense build up of color.  The goal is for the viewer to be ‘inside’ the painting, regardless of its size, and not distracted by my marks or my presence.  Until I have the colors, curves, angles, and relationships precisely as I want, the paint may be sanded off, remixed and reglazed. Finished, i want only seamless color and  shape knit together.   

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Jane Haimes, 2025