Artist’s Statement

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I walked away from painting in 1997, vowing to never paint again. Twenty years later, I started painting again.​
 

Initially fueled by the organic shapes and vivid colors of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs and Yayoi Kusama’s paintings, I set out to find a new visual language of my own.
 

​Often working from an initial Photoshop sketch, I search the internet and books for images of exotic flora and fauna, both macroscopic and microscopic (leaves, coral, diatoms, viruses, etc.). I skew, warp and distort them in Photoshop until I see something I like. I then draw the resulting shapes with chalk on canvas with an acrylic background and work with them there in chalk until I’m ready to apply paint.
 

​I use saturated color, flat shapes, rectilinear backgrounds and borders; embellished with dots, marks, stripes and flowers to build my composition. I often photograph the work in progress on my iPhone and load it back into Photoshop to work out problems and new ideas.
 

In my recent paintings, I have been obsessed with showing movement as well.

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These paintings are all acrylic on unstretched canvas. They hang loosely by pushpins or grommets and suggest banners, flags, quilts or tapestries.

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​In the end, I want my work to be joyous, a retinal delight, and buzzing with life.

 

Jane Chafin

April 2025