Jameson Wells
Taos, NM
Hondo Series #37
Oil/mm/canvas
48” x 30” x 1.5”
2020
$3500
About
Born in Baltimore MD in 1946 into a musical and artistic family, Jameson Wells began making art and studying classical violin at an early age. Her aunt, Haydon Wells, was a graduate of MD Institute of Art, as well as her grandmother Alice Haydon Wells. Nearly everyone in the extended family played music. Her art schooling consists of 4 years at Towson State University in Maryland in the mid-1970’s, studying painting under the tutelage of Enrique Montenegro, who was GA for Richard Diebenkorn at UNM, and Dr. Mildred Zindler for sculpture. In 1978, indirectly through Mr. Montenegro, she moved to New Mexico, first settling in Madrid and to Taos a year later in 1979, where she currently resides. Her work has been represented in galleries in Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Dallas, Houston, Tucson, and in various other shows around the country. Wells has worked in many mediums and styles, including figurative and abstract stone sculpture, paintings of landscapes and dreams, and many years of making abstract wall reliefs in several different series, using paper and mixed media. Her most recent work is abstract collage, using scraps of paper and fabric with mixed media.
Artist Statement
In this time of upheaval, the events in front of us clamor for our attention, and rightly so. Yet, somehow we must maintain a sense of proportion and serenity and wonder, as well, if we would nurture our innermost selves, in the face of great turbulence around us. My current work uses remnants of canvas rolls, old jeans, random cut paper and fabrics, pieces of manufactured borders, edges. Pieces are added, subtracted, woven, painted or drawn around or on or under, or are actually illusory. There are images and ghost images. They are built with a high degree of chance in the process as well as silent contemplation. The paintings bring up issues of what is real/not-real, seeing beyond appearances, stopping to examine more closely, unfinishedness and openness. They seem to me to bring out questions one could ask about”reality”: what is real or appears so but isn’t, the weaving of events that create a situation, about relationships, about thoughts or ideas we have but don’t manifest, on the subatomic level, nothing is solid, is mostly empty space, and in flux. How one approaches something, influences the form it takes. So how does a mere definition by a line create the impression of some thing (like saying something is so, makes it appear so)(politicians). My hope is to encourage the viewer’s curiosity and sense of mystery, and how to tune into the silence that underlies all the busyness of living.
Art from Jameson Wells in other TAAC exhibitions