Caroline Jasper

My oil paintings record all efforts at learning to see and better understand visual perception.  The challenge is to represent on flat canvas, how something three-dimensional looks from direct observation.  I like to push contrast and dramatize color relationships exaggerating how I see it and emphasizing what I find most appealing in this subject.

Choosing what to paint is am emotional-level decision.  Like most living things, I am attracted to light.  Each of my painted scenes is an attempt to recapture the moment of light that compelled me to stay and stare at a place temporarily enjoying the sun's undivided attention.  Light's ability to enrich the most ordinary places and things is my primary motivation.  Still life offers the benefit of captive lighting control.  Outside artists' control, interesting natural sunlight effects must be found.  I wait for clear weather to search locations during early mornings or late afternoons when the sun is low.  I am attracted to simply shaped objects, patterns, and reflective surfaces and tend to crop views making less complicated compositions with few elements.

Beginning each painting on a solid hot red canvas, color/value relationships preoccupy my work.  Bits of red permeate to unify and generate visual effects both literal and emotional.  Although they result in images of places or things, my paintings have more to do with the way I personally interpret what I see, using an academic language of color, shape and brushstroke.