Conceputal hard edge artist Jane Goodwin
Hello Jane. Can you tell us somehting about your background?
I have made art since the age of five. Before studying art, I worked in media, publishing and advertising. Many aspects of these professions have since fed into the development of my art practise. I have been lucky enough to combine family life (I have three children) with my professional life.
I have developed a variety of global experience over the years working across London, Europe and Brazil in various spaces and galleries. My current studio is in London and also Barcelona. I regularly visit galleries, both public and commercial, and am currently showing with the Lisa Norris Gallery in Fulham, and Jaggedart in Marylebone. My studio practise is very important to me as it allows me to develop my work and at the same time keeps me in contact with other artists and their various practices.
Let’s talk about your art
I see myself as a conceptual artist, my work is broad based encompassing sculpture, painting, works on paper and I have enjoyed experimenting with film and photography. I do all this because I can. The main thrust of my work for the last 10 years is hard edge abstraction paintings. I have always been fascinated by the simple arrangement of form. Line, space and colour being my main concerns.
There is a degree of obsessive repetition in my paintings which I observe in the urban life around me; the grids of streets, the forms of contemporary architecture, the light that reflects on surfaces. I play with light through geometry, shifting the darkness into something brighter, hopefully in a seamless way. I am not interested in literal representation. I have developed a strong fixation with certain colours, blue being the most predominant. I want my urban based work to be future led, but at the same time retaining its firm roots in the traditions of the 20th century.
My paintings are connected to a long lineage of abstract movements, the Concrete artists of the 1930’s and the Systemic artists of the 1960’s. Mathematics is a way of achieving compositional harmony. The lack of subject matter leaves me free to achieve this. The mathematical variables are the framework to my making sense out of the urban world in which I live. The hard edge lines of my paintings exist to clarify the obsessive repetition of the work. The stage of painting, when I am handling and mixing the pigment, is when the alchemical magic and happy accidents happen. Unlike the mathematical principals that underline my work, the coloured areas are forever shifting and determine the density of colour and texture of the surface on the canvas.
Please tell us somehting about your modus operandi
I work mainly on a series of paintings, three or four at a time, (I am currently on my ninth series), and with each one interrelating to the others, so creating a unified system. I am keen to evolve existing forms of enquiry not only in my own practice but within this particular movement of hard edge abstraction, which I am passionate about. I think the idea of painting should go beyond the surface of a canvas and experiment with how the edges extend the two-dimensional plane to the outer space.
My work does not contain emotional context, nor is it a closed autonomous mechanical thing bereft of human values, but sits somewhere between the spectrum of the two. I wish my painting vocabulary to be an ongoing process of distilling day to day life around me so that it becomes the essence of an experience in pictorial form.
What does being an artist mean to you?
I want to continue the line of important female abstract painters. To control and complete my own style of creativity and at the same time to promote and develop the art movement that I am involved with. I am curious about the role of artists in society, and wish to probe the visual language of art that I am historically following. I have always felt that the simplicity of my work, be it painting or sculpture, provides the power, resulting in clarity and boldness. I relish the challenges that each series of my work bring with it, and it is gratifying to move forwards to other projects so stimulating my line of enquiry and creative ability.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
As a female abstract painter, I am acutely aware of the historical problems women have faced, and continue to face with in my chosen profession. Women such as Carmen Herrera, Agnes Martin and Anni Albers are my role models having attained recognition late in their lives.
Jane Goodwin ★ Artist resume
I am a conceptual artist; my work is urban-based and future led with roots firmly based in the traditions of 20th century abstraction. I use mathematics as my main way of achieving compositional harmony. The focus lays on creating new forms, planes, shapes and colours out of a logical system of spatial calculations, using repetition and division. I am obsessed with variations on mathematical calculations, and simply by using different colour compositions I attain a variety of seemingly simple but complex forms. Also, i have concentrated on using a restricted palette of mainly three hues of blue. This has led to a tantalising range of colours and has become the pulse of my paintings. I am not interested in natural form but get my inspiration from elements I see on a daily basis in urban life.
Thanks a lot, Jane.
Instagram: @jane.goodwin.art
Web: janegoodwinart.com
