Art Exhibition | Jane Kell: Color and Light

Schedule

Thu Jun 08 2023 at 01:00 pm to 06:00 pm

Location

Amy Kaslow Gallery | Washington, DC

Advertisement
Amy Kaslow Gallery presents Jane Kell: Color and Light featuring 10 new abstract landscapes by the British painter.
About this Event

Amy Kaslow Gallery and Jane Kell have been together since we opened in 2020. The British painter was our first Artist-in-Residence, always accompanied by her loyal rescue dog, Penny. The two moved back to London where Kell built a bright and expansive studio last year. We are delighted to welcome her return to Washington, DC this May, 2023. She brings us a large body of new work, warm and rich with her signature reflected color and light.


The collection, the third in her series of one-woman exhibitions with us, shows greater balance than any work she has assembled before. Perhaps this is because Kell herself is firmly footed back home, exploring the City’s lush gardens and reunited with eager British galleries while her following grows among international collectors.


Ever drawn to waterways and wild brush, Kell captures nature, raw and untouched. “Color and Light” draws powerfully from her recent visit to Santa Barbara, California where she studied the vistas, the ocean’s edge, the open sky. Each of her ten new oils on canvas and fifteen new sketches is draped in immersive colors that bleed and fuse elegantly, with the control of a brush that allows the viewer to take the abstraction even further. We recognize that water, we see that land mass ahead, and yet it is the very essence of abstract. And as with her previous exhibitions with us, the colorist experiments: Kell’s striking results are the two large thickly pigmented “Landmass” and “Shallows”. The color punch and modular effect stake out new terrain for the artist. Big, very bold, with greater abstraction.

The painter takes us to coves, sloping coastlines, and suggested spots in the distance, often through a more delicate mix of pigmented light. “North Coast” is a mesmerizing mix of color blocks on land and far more technical brush strokes for a wispy, albeit threatening sky.

Kell has lived painting. Born to artist parents in northern England’s Yorkshire in 1963, she later earned a degree in Art History and Theory from Essex University. She first picked up a paint brush after a London-based career in arts publishing and public relations. Influenced by British modernist Barbara Hepworth, Kell admires the sculptor’s ability to “channel the shapes and qualities of the landscape into her work but create entirely abstract art with natural form.” Kell takes organic forms and lights them with a saturation of color that is exciting, and unmistakably her own.

Away from her studio, Kell fills sketchbooks using gouache, watercolor and pastels she converts into large scale canvases. The sketches give insight into Jane Kell’s working practice; indeed, these are striking works in their own right. Working alla prima, she paints directly on the canvas without preliminary drawings. To map out space, she deploys thinned down color, and later applies thicker impasto layers. With a turpentine-soaked rag, she wipes off sections of paint to create movement, freely changing the paint’s physical quality to produce an ethereal effect. She adds pastels, too, by layering the chalky pigment of the crayons onto the canvas or adding graphic lines, to increase the definition and texture.

Jane Kell’s works are in private collections across Europe, Asia and the US. She is a Phillips Collection Centennial awardee, remarkable for a non-American. This is her third exhibition with us since we began our partnership.

Learn more: https://amykaslowgallery.com/events/jane-kell-color-and-light

Follow us on Instagram for updates: @AmyKaslowGallery

Advertisement

Where is it happening?

Amy Kaslow Gallery, 4300 Fordham Road Northwest, Washington, United States

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Tickets

USD 0.00

Amy Kaslow Gallery

Host or Publisher Amy Kaslow Gallery

It's more fun with friends. Share with friends