Jane Chafin, Artist
Artist’s Statement
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.
These paintings are all acrylic on unstretched canvas. They hang loosely by pushpins or grommets and suggest banners, flags, quilts or tapestries.
In the end, I want my work to be joyous, a retinal delight, and buzzing with life.
Jane Chafin
April 2025