TAG-Arts Artist Profile

An English painter living in the south of France, Jane Harris has been on our radar screen since the early 1990s when she first started producing highly textural paintings.

Her works are often described as color field paintings, but Harris insists her conical-like shapes are inspired by the classical forms seen in a French garden. Symmetry is important in her compositions, with the relationship between positive and negative space being a key element to the work.

Jane's process is meticulous. The inner color is always a different texture than the background color. She does not use tape to achieve the crisp, sharp edges between the two colors; rather all of the lines are painted by hand.

There are also specific rules that Harris adheres to when painting. She never mixes more than three colors to create a hue to be used in a piece. This is partly out of a desire to "keep things simple." Additionally no two paintings are comprised of the same color combination. For a long period of time Jane used variations of primary and secondary colors. Recent works, however, have employed metallic paint which interacts even more effectively with changes in light, emphasizing the texture of the paint.

Jane's primary gallery is Hales Gallery in London. Examples of her work are owned by the Arts Council of England, the Birmingham Museum, and Art Gallery, Clarins among other important institutions. She recently showed at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT.